Some quick thoughts re Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report, his unique role in D.C., his feelings about tonight's GOP debate in Las Vegas, and the 2016 presidential campaign thus far... @CharlieCookDC

What’s on the line in Las Vegas https://t.co/ymXEuE6oRS pic.twitter.com/QwvljYnJj7

— National Journal (@nationaljournal) December 15, 2015

The National Journal
What’s on the Line in Las Vegas - For some of the Republican wannabes, Tuesday’s debate could matter a lot.
Charlie Cook, December 14, 2015

As we get older, some of us ac­cu­mu­late pet peeves. For me, this is one: when journ­al­ists write of an up­com­ing event as tan­tamount to a turn­ing point in the his­tory of civil­iz­a­tion, or at least since the in­ven­tion of sliced bread. In polit­ics, many im­port­ant events shape elec­tions, and a suc­ces­sion of events big and small make up what we call the cam­paign. For some of the can­did­ates, Tues­day night’s Re­pub­lic­an de­bate in Las Ve­gas, sponsored by CNN and Face­book, is crit­ic­ally im­port­ant; for oth­ers, even a strong per­form­ance would likely be too little, too late. There are likely to be no ad­di­tion­al events between now and the first week of Janu­ary—noth­ing that’s planned, any­way—that can change the dy­nam­ics of this race.

Read the rest of the article at http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/126039

A column I hated to write. https://t.co/ilbsKUYvDV

— Charlie Cook (@CharlieCookDC) December 11, 2015

Why I was an NJ addict: https://t.co/Yxis9fZfiv via @CharlieCookDC pic.twitter.com/3BuU2ZWnqa

— National Journal (@nationaljournal) December 11, 2015

If Trump or Carson win GOP nomination, I will eat crow. Not worried about it: https://t.co/xiJW6wTF2e

— Charlie Cook (@CharlieCookDC) December 1, 2015

Swing voters increasingly MIA, interesting article. https://t.co/kIqzuWdmYG

— Charlie Cook (@CharlieCookDC) November 5, 2015

I first met Charlie Cook of the eponymous Cook Political Report in 1992, when I had a 5-6 month gig at Roll Call newspaper in DC in-between some interviews I was having for some fulltime jobs at trade associations and law/lobbying firms, starting in the spring before the 1992 General Election that Bill Clinton won. 

This was in the pre-Internet era when Doug Bailey's The Hotline was faxed daily to eager subscribers aroung the Beltway and the country, and their most-eagerly anticipated 'coverage' in the 15-20 pages we'd print out were whatever crazy smart or crazy cruel thing that Mary Matalin had said in defense of President Bush or against Bill Clinton and the Democrats, and she pulled no punches, much to everyone's delight and constant amazement in the office. 
(If only Twitter had existed then!)

This was back when Roll Call was co-owned by Arthur Levitt before President Clinton nominated him to be SEC Chairman, and the paper was edited by James "Jim' Glassman. 
Which is to say, before it was owned by The Economist, and before The Hill existed.

Charlie's then-independent Cook Political Report was then-located in the same office around the corner from DC's Union Station as us, a few blocks north of the Senate side of Capitol Hill. 
It's while there that among other things, that I first met future Washington state's U.S. Senator Patty Murray months before she won her Senate primary and before her consultant's "mom in tennis shoes" ad campaign became a bit of a national thing via CNN.

That came about because a colleague in the Washington state Senate had once, foolishly, said she was “just a mom in tennis shoes. Go home. You can’t make a difference.”
Then as well as now, sometimes, left to their own devices, your opponents create your golden opportunity.

So, naturally, given all this, we were all VERY curious what Murray would wear for her first appointment with Charlie, which we all knew in advance would be crucial to her, and if positive,would likely have a tidal wave effect on DC PACs and the Beltway Dem money crowd IF she impressed him and his staff.

Surprise! She made a point of wearing sneakers with her smart professional outfit, looking like most of the women I'd just seen on the Metro train a few minutes before, wearing some sort of Anne Klein II thing. 
Murray's now the highest-ranking woman in the Senate.

In large part because of his amiable personality and disposition towards fairness -and his remarkable lack of a large ego despite his renown- as well as his zeal for facts and analytics, and his crazy memory for arcane facts, Charlie is probably the most-universally respected person I ever met in my 15 years in DC from 1988-2003.

Dave 

Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth

https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies

http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/HallandaleBeachBlog

More bad MSM analysis of Marco Rubio 2016 and immigration reform that includes the usual convenient forgetting of facts/polls that disagree with the central thesis of both La Raza and the GOP Consulting Class. Wow, this is getting tiresome! Jill Lawrence in National Journal: The Myth of Marco Rubio’s Immigration Problem; what's NOT a myth is Miami Herald's recent censorship of criticism of Rubio over immigration reform, esp. Ryan Lizza essay

The myth of @marcorubio's immigration problem. His position is same as most of '16 field. My latest @nationaljournal http://t.co/fgxjAstZiG
— Jill Lawrence (@JillDLawrence) July 15, 2013

My comments are after the frustrating column in Beltway Conventional Wisdom at bottom.

I know I can't be the only former Democrat who voted for Marco Rubio for U.S. Senate
in the 2010 Florida primary and general election who will publicly admit that he's unqualified
to be President or Veep in 2016, and who also think he's wrong on immigration.
The one thing I know that GOP pollster Whit Ayres can't seem to accept is that Marco Rubio can't possibly do anything in the future politically without votes from voters like me.
If voters like me ever turn on him for good...

-----

The National Journal

The Myth of Marco Rubio’s Immigration Problem

He’s taking heat for supporting a path to citizenship. 

But almost every other GOP 2016 prospect does too.

By Jill Lawrence

July 15, 2013 | 6:00 a.m.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is losing altitude with some conservatives because he’s the Republican face of immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Yet he’ll have a lot of company in the 2016 field if he runs for the GOP presidential nomination.

In fact almost every Republican weighing a 2016 race – from Jeb Bush and Chris Christie to Paul Ryan and Bobby Jindal – favors some path to citizenship like the one in the comprehensive reform bill passed by the Senate, or is open to a variation of it.

Read the rest of the column at:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/the-myth-of-marco-rubio-s-immigration-problem-20130715

This is unintentionally funny, that is, if you think biased or uneven reporting is funny, given  that like a 1,001 of these media pieces on Marco Rubio the last few weeks,  The  National Journal's Jill Lawrence never actually talks to a serious and articulate person who is actually against Schumer-Rubio and who can make the case that there is a lot everyone can agree on and it's precisely THOSE policies of agreement that should be done FIRST on immigration 
reform, and the Gang of Eight prescription of a path to citizenship is NOT one of things that a majority of Americans agree.

But when confronted with that fact and numerous polls in all parts of the country showing this,

Rubio and the rest of the Gang, along with their various sycophants and proxies in the news media, Think Tanks and the Beltway GOP Consulting Establishment, esp. those with a tie to big-time corporate Agribusiness, want to grab their football and run home -and sulk.

And send email to supposedly-conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks about how unfair it all is that some voters in the country, especially the active GOP grassroots, are openly resistant to the demands of the GOP Beltway Crowd that this should be rammed thru or swallowed whole, despite the fact that its own supporters clearly haven't read it all and even now still can't explain all its ramifications to well-prepped reporters with a straight face.

Which, last time I checked, is what one of the public's principal criticisms of Obamacare were.

Correctly as we all know now.

Of course, like all those other pieces on Marco Rubio that have run the past few weeks that are almost always largely pro-Rubio -even if they do feel the occasional need for PR purposes to rap his knuckles or take him to task for some element of his amnesty position that doesn't please La Raza, Univision or the Democratic left- Jill Lawrence's 

conscious choice to NOT speak to someone smart and knowledgeable about what's going-on like Mickey Kaus, who can make that logical and persuasive counter-argument that includes Border protection, and do it in an interesting and informative way, Lawrence makes it much-easier for her to write her column.

And in the end, isn't that what's really most important to her?!

Rubio tries 2 amend bill 2 add things he said were already there RT @SenRubioPress Ensuring English Proficiency http://t.co/PkkREnK2uq
— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) June 11, 2013

.@conncarroll @ThePlumLineGS @DavidMDrucker So under guise of getting tough, @JohnCornyn drops even Gangof8's fence requirement? Tough?
— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) June 12, 2013

The one person she does quote a lot, GOP consultant Whit Ayres, seems to me to be laboring under one very large false illusion, and it's a sign of how disconnected so much of the GOP Consulting Class is that this can happen without someone who knows him grabbing him by the lapels and snapping him out of zombie-like trance chanting counter-intuitive nostrums about why it's correct for this bad piece of legislation to get passed the way he and the GOP Establishment want -expecting any new-ish group of voters in the future to be "thankful" to the GOP for passing it is preposterous and shows no understanding of either human or voting behavior in this country.

But then what are we to make of this?

It’s not a given that Republicans will lose if they stay the course. Those who are well funded, strong in their convictions, and persuasive on the stump might just prevail. Defiance might be worth a try, since the stakes are kind of big: constructive governance and the future of the Republican Party.

Funny, Jill Lawrence herself wrote that.
But she didn't write it within the context of the immigration story, even though it would be true, perhaps more so than any other issue.

Nope, she wrote this back in March, and the title that The National Journal came up for that tells you everything you need to know about the way she views the world, making her piece today seem all the more predictable:

Republicans Need to Think for Themselves, Even in Election Years
The GOP will never get fixed if its candidates keep running scared from primary challenges
By Jill Lawrence
Updated: May 30, 2013 | 12:31 a.m., March 4, 2013 | 11:22 a.m.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/republicans-need-to-think-for-themselves-even-in-election-years-20130304

Call me crazy but my intuition based on actually paying attention to what happens in this country is that those future new permanent residents-turned voters will walk into the voting booth in their town's city hall or rec center or Senior's Center and calmly vote against Ayres' GOP candidates and not think about it twice.

Meanwhile, Ayres will still be trying to talk his failed candidates off a ledge by rationalizing the bad decision he made, as if that will do any good to his defeated candidates, after-the-fact, like they were sacrifices to appease the PC media gods.

And the candidates will remind him that he never said anything BEFORE th election about them being sacrifices, since they were paying him full-price.

It's all so very predictable, even without benefit of my handy Time Machine, but as usual, instead of someone with moxie like Kaus, who isn't afraid to fire back, it's pro-amnesty Establishment GOP Ayres whom Lawrence decides to make the conscience of her piece, which is why he'll still keep getting quoted in the future, no matter how wrong he is and illogical his analysis proves to be for years in retrospect.

This situation with Ayres is the precisely the sort of thing that, whatever else is wrong with American sports and the sports media punditocracy these days, and there's a lot, it shows that it is much more self-correcting than the world of political consulting and broadcast/print punditry.

Sometime, like a MLB pitcher with an un-hittable fastball who never learned to adapt and develop any other consistent pitches in crucial situations that could get strikes and not be hit in the air, a pundit just loses their honed intuition.

That's it -the end. 

An Ayres could not last for very long on Fox Sports game day coverage of the NFL or even ESPN/ABC's stranglehold of college football game day coverage, by consistently being wrong about what happened and what will happen next.

But because Ayres has been inoculated by a member in good standing of the MSM, he'll continue to be able to sound-off on politics with reporters from outlets all over the country with no idea of his poor judgment and analysis.
It's our New Normal.

And if you still haven't read the great Ryan Lizza essay on Rubio and the Gang of Eight's bill that the Miami Herald consciously prevented from ever being publicly mentioned in print by their reporters or in their blogs, as I wrote about last month a few times, see:

The New Yorker
GETTING TO MAYBE
Inside the Gang of Eight’s immigration deal.
BY RYAN LIZZA
JUNE 24, 2013

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/06/24/130624fa_fact_lizza

re Marco Rubio: Oh dear! Another predictable Beth Reinhard paint-by-numbers piece on Rubio in The National Journal, full of the usual resume/personality recitals. I'll bet I can guess what Reinhard will say about him before reading it. Yes, and so can you! That's the whole problem -Reinhard writes about Rubio by rote; Where's the plan for positive changes at McClatchy's Miami Herald -still missing!

U.S. Senate longshot candidate Marco Rubio in Hallandale Beach, FL at Southeast Broward Republican Club. June 23, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

The National Journal

POLITICS

Can Marco Rubio Live Up to the Hype?

He's the GOP's Barack Obama, a fresh-faced politician with an immigrant name, a playlist full of rap, and a collection of fawning press clips. The challenge: He's selling the same old party message.

By Beth Reinhard

Updated: February 14, 2013 | 8:50 p.m. 

February 14, 2013 | 8:20 p.m.

The freshman senator from Florida had joined four veteran colleagues to unveil a proposal for the first major overhaul of immigration law in a quarter-century. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced “my friend, Senator [Marco] Rubio, who obviously is a new but incredibly important voice in this whole issue of immigration reform.”

Two weeks earlier, Rubio had laid out a similar set of principles in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal under the headline, “Marco Rubio: Riding to the Immigration Rescue.” The article came as a surprise to McCain and other members of the bipartisan group of senators who had been sketching out an immigration plan with and without Rubio for weeks. The blueprint was inspired by legislation that McCain first spearheaded in 2005.

The dig was subtle, but Rubio didn’t let it go.

Read the rest of this at: http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/can-marco-rubio-live-up-to-the-hype-20130214

Oh dear! Another predictable Beth Reinhard paint-by-numbers piece on Marco Rubio in The National Journal, full of the usual resume/personality recitals.

Bet I can guess what Beth Reinhard will say about Marco Rubio. 

Yes, and so can you! 

That's the problem -Reinhard writes about Rubio by rote.

Just like her last piece on him.

Even the new anecdotes she drops throughout the column sound just like the old ones she used, since they are almost always cobbled together to create the same old product: Marco the Magnificent.

It would be far better if she spoke to veteran analysts like Charlie Cook, also of the National Journal and someone whose every word I read religiously for meaning and portent, as mentioned many times here in the past, which is why I've linked to so many of his columns here over the years.

Specifically, speak to Cook about the dangers of over-exposure, which he is getting closer to everyday, and the graveyard of presidential candidates that peaked early and never made it to Election Day because they prematurely annoyed or bored America silly, or flat out didn't have the sort of practical experience needed or the ability to articulate a cogent, distinct message that resonated with the public and which could grow even larger with hard work.

Bill Bradley for instance.

Even though I was an early and very confident Senate supporter of Rubio's in 2009, when the entire Florida GOP and business establishment, along with Florida's sycophantic Mainstream Media, plus the East Coast drive-by MSM, practically handed the 2010 Republican Senate nomination to then-Governor Charlie Crist, in my opinion, Rubio needs to actually accomplish a lot more of substance sooner -and be seen LESS in a pop-culture prism- otherwise, everyone in America may be bored silly by the sight of him within two years as the new car smell wears off, just as he's campaigning for House and Senate candidates throughout the country, and actually getting most of the questions, not the candidates he's with.

Yes, just like a once interesting new TV commercial that you have now grown to cringe at within a milli-second of seeing on TV and reach for the remote.

And if and when that happens, the only thing that will be written about him will be the hit pieces by the usual suspects, especially among liberal reporters and columnists in the West, who have no secret of the fact that they resent the collective power of Cubans in the political process compared to Mexicans, who vastly outnumber them.

And Univision, of course, in their creepy stalker-like relationship with Rubio, where they are always looking to see if he's spending too much time with someone else.

Y
es, Univision, the Spanish-language channel that the Miami Herald is always kissing the butt of and overplaying the significance of, but who will, not so curiously, not mention in print that they didn't air President Obama's State of the the Union address, which is why they won Tuesday night in the TV ratings.

Nope, no mention, as you can see for yourself. 

http://www.miamiherald.com/search_results?aff=1100&q=univision

I thought they were the new "It"?

Qué pasa, Herald?

Yes, Univision, the politically-biased TV network that makes it very clear in their so-called news coverage that the only reasonable side of the immigration debate is pro-amnesty, otherwise, you are a racist. 

Oh yeah -and the supposed news network whose employees loves to take public whacks at 
Rubio.

That is, if they, too, aren't already bored silly by Rubio and tired of pointing-out the same deficiencies they saw/see in him, over-and-over.

On the other hand, it's good to remember that Rubio eventually got so bored/irritated with Reinhard asking him the same ol' leading questions over-and-over during his long Senate campaign, that as I wrote here at the time, towards the end, he eventually started freezing her out because he simply couldn't take the routine anymore

You might recall that was back when the Herald's then-Ombudsman took Beth Reinhard (and the Herald) to task in his once-in-a-while Sunday column for having one person perform both reporter and columnist duties, saying that it was a conflict of interest.

The Ombudsman was right, of course, and Reinhard proved why that was true by being whiny publicly in her columns about being frozen out by Rubio, which not only made her less attractive to Rubio as a person to speak with, but for voters and newspaper readers, made her 'articles' about him not at all reliable, since you already knew that she was mad at him enough to say so publicly.

But I guess I'm the only one who remembers that, huh?

Alas, the Herald's then-Ombudsman left in April of 2011 and has never been replaced, with rather predictable results from my perspective: more bias than ever in articles as well as more missing facts and context.

As many of you regular readers know, I've directly asked the Herald's top management why there's been no replacement and no mention made in the paper of what their plan is, if any, for an eventual replacement.

And, what their plan for improvement in print and online was to keep the faith of readers.

That's been met with stony silence. 

Followed by more silence.

A smart and fair-minded person representing the interests of Herald readers and ethics is not in the cards there.

Folks, it's time to face the fact that publisher David Landsberg has no actual plan for the Herald's future that positive for news consumers, because if he did, he'd have already made them public months before they went to a pay wall, and only added the pay wall AFTER getting rid of the problem step-children, adding new and curious columnists and reporters who don't take things for granted -one of the worst daily offenses there!-  and completely re-do the website from top-to-bottom, so the same stories don't appear in three separate places there, as happens now, which is acutely embarrassing for everyone, most of all, them.

That's why in my opinion, with the same people in charge, the Herald's problems are only going to get worse over time.

But if someone with some smarts and money bought the Sun-Sentinel, fired all the dead wood and made it more like some of the Swedish newspapers that I've become increasingly  used to, and read daily while I was in Stockholm last month, newspapers which are very popular, well then, you could well see will see a very interesting dynamic take place here

in South Florida.

But not right now.

Now, each newspaper and its management seem locked in a battle of lethargy to do the least amount of original enterprise reporting possible.

  

------

TheWrap

Ratings: Univision Wins Night By Skipping State of the Union

By Tim Kenneally

Published: February 13, 2013 @ 10:03 am

http://www.thewrap.com/tv/column-post/ratings-nbc-wins-key-demo-state-union-coverage-77506

November 1, 2010

Hallandale Beach Blog endorses Beth Reinhard & Charlie Crist's departure - asks they get escort to airport so they don't miss their flights out of FL

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/hallandale-beach-blog-endorses-beth.html

September 3, 2010

Addition by subtraction: Beth Reinhard leaving Miami Herald, heading to D.C. and The National Journal. Herald readers finally win one!

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/addition-by-subtraction-beth-reinhard.html

-----

Univision staffer attacks Sen. Marco Rubio on Facebook

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/08/3224442/univision-staffer-attacks-sen.html

No doubt after the Castro Brothers finally go adios for good, many of the Univision employees will try to move to Cuba and try to suddenly reinvent themselves as real journalists, after years of being celebrity hand-holdres, political suck-ups and amateur political science professors based in LA, NYC and Miami, forever intent on lecturing us on how important Latin America is, despite the fact that we mostly don't care about it for perfectly valid reasons, no matter how much they insist it's important.

But it's not, even with changing demographics and population changes, Americans aren't going to suddenly care about Honduras or Uruguay or Brazil if they never did before, and they can't let on that the whole thing has been a journalistic con for years to fleece advertising dollars.

South Florida's wealthiest and most liberal 1% will be keen listeners as Obama lectures nation about 'fairness' and Buffett Rule in Florida this afternoon, but Swing Independent voters care less about 'fairness' than economic opportunity and job creation -real jobs!

South Florida's wealthiest and most liberal 1% will be keen listeners as Obama lectures nation about 'fairness' and Buffett Rule in Florida this afternoon, but Swing Independent voters care less about 'fairness' than economic opportunity and job creation -real jobs!

The Third Way think tank report is not good news for the folks at Obama-Biden 2012, given the heated and self-congratulatory rhetoric of many of their most fervent acolytes:
http://thirdway.org/publications/511


And the fact that the Buffett Rule would have little effect on tax revenue doesn't help, raising maybe $5.1 billion, and have no effect on the federal deficit or debt.
A 1% cut at every federal agency would result in over $33 billion in savings.
But that's NOT what Obama wants to do, is it?



Much ado about...

Open publication - Free publishing - More independents

http://issuu.com/thirdway/docs/third_way_report_-_opportunity_trumps_fairness_?mode=window&backgroundColor=%23222222




The National Journal

DECODED blog
The Fairness Agenda Divides Democrats. Seriously.
By Jill Lawrence
April 9, 2012 | 11:00 PM

For a brief moment it seemed that Democrats had become the organized party Will Rogers never knew, orchestrating a seamless campaign against the unfairness they see in the tax code and their support for tax reforms meant to ensure that billionaires like Warren Buffett don't pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

But as President Obama and other Democrats ramp up for a Senate vote next week on the so-called Buffett rule, the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way is rudely interrupting the unity-fest with a warning that this is the wrong way to lock down wavering independents in swing states. These crucial voters prefer hearing candidates talk about opportunity, the group said.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2012/04/election-could-hinge-on-the-me.php

CBS News

April 10, 2012 10:54 AM

Buffett Rule: Policy prescription, or political opportunity?

By Stephanie Condon

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57411818-503544/buffett-rule-policy-prescription-or-political-opportunity/

Roll Call
White House Lays Out Case for Buffett Rule
By Steven T. Dennis, Roll Call Staff
April 10, 2012, 6 a.m.

The White House released a new report today backing President Barack Obama’s proposed Buffett Rule to impose a minimum 30 percent tax on incomes of more than $1 million in advance of a speech on the subject by the president this afternoon in Florida.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/white-house-lays-out-case-buffett-rule-millionaires-tax-213696-1.html


-----
http://issuu.com/thirdway

The Rob Portman for VP boomlet begins to take shape, and once it becomes a bandwagon, it won't be stopped

Sen. Rob Portman and Sen. Ron Wyden Introduce Bill to Help Lower Medicare Costs by Keeping Seniors Healthy. March 29, 2012.

http://youtu.be/r51NayIBBVc

Personally, despite the avalanche of media stories we've seen in South Florida for months exploring and positing various positives and negatives about Marco Rubio, I've thought that Ohio senator and former OMB chief Rob Portman would be the GOP pick for Vice President for probably about eight months, which is part of the reason why I started a subscription to his YouTube Channel around then, and as you may've surmised, the video above is the fruit of that tree.

Over the weekend, when reading what was new at The National Journal, a magazine that, as I've noted before here, I first became aware of while attending IU, I came across this very persuasive column by Major Garrett making some of the same points that I've been making in conversations for months down here, a few of which are precisely why Rubio is not as qualified right now.

Despite what you may start hearing from the Mainstream Media about Mitt Romney looking to protect his right-flank by choosing one of two former governors, it won't be either Tim Pawlenty or Mike Huckabee, because in my opinion, neither has the ability to move a sufficient number of the tens of thousands of college-educated Independent voters in North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania who are THE voters who will decide November's election.

They are more interested in the economy, cutting government spending and creating jobs than they are in social issues, and Rob Portman is someone whose résumé and personality will appeal to them, especially the entrepreneurs who genuinely want meaningful health care reform, but NOT the sort of over-reach and top-down government tyranny of Obamacare, which will be a job-killer.

The National Journal

ALL POWERS

Rob Portman's the One

Why I think the senator from Ohio is going to be the veep nominee.

By Major Garrett

Updated: April 5, 2012  2:45 p.m. 

April 4, 2012  6:00 a.m.

Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee, Wisconsin sealed the deal, and he will pick Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio as his running mate.

Write it down. And harangue me mercilessly this summer if I am wrong.

Column writing, I have learned, is part provocation and part explanation.

There is nothing provocative about declaring that Portman will be Romney's running mate, except that it hasn't happened and I don't know it an as absolute fact.

But everything tells me it will be so.

Read the rest of the column at:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/all-powers/rob-portman-s-the-one-20120404

-----

http://twitter.com/#!/MajoratNJ

http://www.youtube.com/user/SenRobPortman

John Mica on Northeast Corridor high speed rail/transit legislation that works for taxpayers and commuters -open up NEC to competition

Fox Business News Channel - House Transportation chairman John Mica Discusses High-Speed Rail. June 7, 2011.
http://youtu.be/9V2mGU3z81g




U.S. House Transportation Comm. chairman John Mica discusses efforts at reforming American transit/transportation policy, high speed rail legislation in the Northeast corridor, i.e the Mica-Shuster Intercity Rail bill and the importance of having a meaningful public-private partnership (P3) rather than continue to rely on the failed current template, wherein AmTrak makes ALL the decisions.

June 15, 2011 http://youtu.be/k3oDTsp2Bv8

The best story I've seen on this effort to take AmTrak out of the driver's seat, which I agree with, is this one from the National Journal's Transportation Experts blog:

National Journal

Amtrak: Is It Really the Same Old Debate?

By Fawn Johnson

June 20, 2011

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica, R-Fla., last week came up with a pretty cool way to unveil an idea that he has been tossing around for some time. His policy proposal, which comes as no surprise, is to separate Amtrak from the Northeast Corridor and open the heavily trafficked route up to private competition.

Read the rest of the post at
http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2011/06/amtrak-is-it-really-the-same-o.php

http://youtu.be/2KmU2Ge_XPo

An advertisement for the X2000 train used by SJ AB -Swedish Railways

http://youtu.be/CaiP2f-s0C4

The jazz music played here in the advert made me think of the pseudo-sophisticated feel we were supposed to get from the Harrison Ford-Kristin Scott Thomas relationship in the 1999 film Random Hearts.

I love Kristin Scott Thomas, but... the constant over-the-top jazz just got me irritated instead of engaged in the narrative!

See also:

http://transportation.house.gov/

Fast Tracks USA YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/USHSR

Fast Tracks USA homepage: www.ushsr.com

Reconnecting America homepage: http://reconnectingamerica.org/

http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/

English language homepage for SJ AB -Swedish Railway:

http://www.sj.se/start/startpage/index.form?l=en

What you know implicitly, Rasmussen Reports confirms: "57% Okay with Government Shutdown If It Leads to Deeper Budget Cuts"; Marco Rubio on CRs

Sen. Marco Rubio video: In His Own Words: Week In Review -April 1, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y-NXWsbsWw




Fox News Channel video: Sen. Marco Rubio on 2011 federal budget and why he'd vote against raising the federal debt limit on Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" -April 1, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WzzhgH_wzA

In my email inbox today comes confirmation of what I've known since November's election, which is that despite all the predictable paint-by-number "Rally in Tally" stories locally, and the Tweets, blog postings and warnings of doom from liberal interest groups and the predictable pleadings of the government employee class and their friends in the MSM, that the Tea Party, such as it is, will overplay their hand, the reality is that voters want smaller government budgets and more cuts.

Rasmussen Reports
57% Okay With Government Shutdown If It Leads to Deeper Budget Cuts
Friday, April 01, 2011

A majority of voters are fine with a partial shutdown of the federal government if that’s what it takes to get deeper cuts in federal government spending.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% of Likely U.S. Voters think making deeper spending cuts in the federal budget for 2011 is more important than avoiding a partial government shutdown...

Read the rest of the polling data at:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/march_2011/57_okay_with_government_shutdown_if_it_leads_to_deeper_budget_cuts




Fox News Channel video: Rep. Jeb Hensarling on 2011 budget battle and prospect of government shutdown on Fox News Channel's "America's Newsroom"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk0Hla0VAH0

See also:
Congressional Quarterly
GOP weighs budget compromise
http://www.congress.org/news/2011/04/01/gop_weighs_budget_compromise#src=db

National Journal
Tea Party Divide: Protesters Call for Shutdown; Lawmakers, Not So Much Republican lawmakers insist they want to keep the government open.
By Lindsey Boerma
Thursday, March 31, 2011 | 4:15 p.m.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/tea-party-divide-protesters-call-for-shutdown-lawmakers-not-so-much-20110331

http://www.youtube.com/user/RepPaulRyan

http://www.youtube.com/user/RepJebHensarling

http://www.youtube.com/user/SenatorMarcoRubio

Addition by subtraction: Beth Reinhard leaving Miami Herald, heading to D.C. and The National Journal. Herald readers finally win one!

Per Miami Herald Losing Chief Political Reporter Beth Reinhard To National Journal
Miami NewTimes By Tim Elfrink,
Thursday, September 2 2010 @ 1:39PM
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2010/09/herald_losing_chief_political.php

It's only my opinion, but from my own perspective and experience, the Miami Herald's Beth Reinhard can't leave South Florida soon enough.

I know that makes some of you laugh because you know I thought THAT was the case years ago, too. Know that I'd have been only too happy to drive her to the train station to split town if people down here actually took trains.
You're right -it's a long time coming.

But long-frustrated Miami Herald readers finally have a reason to cheer.

Reinhard's oh-so predictable and often deadly-dull Conventional Wisdom take on the passing political scene may've been fine for the Quad Cities in 1966, but among other fatal flaws, she seem handcuffed to the "Usual Suspects," forever quoting the same handful of people with motives she never bothered to reveal.

(And yes, I've been to the Quad Cities area in Iowa, too, spending a week there in Davenport, driving over from Chicago for business in 1987. One night, when I couldn't fall asleep in my hotel room, I went for a walk around midnight, eventually crossing the Rock Island Centennial Bridge (U.S.-67) over the Mississippi River from Davenport to Rock Island.

I was NOT expecting that the bridge sidewalk would be mesh-like metal, since that meant I couldn't look down, otherwise it would have caused me to get dizzy over the water.
It was a VERY weird sensation to walk across the bridge at that hour and just stand there in the middle for 15-20 minutes and think of all the history that has gone past you and below you.

I eventually ate at an IHOP or diner in Rock Island and got back to my hotel room in Davenport around 3:30 a.m. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Centennial_Bridge

I also visited the great minor league ballpark there on the River, then called John O'Donnell Stadium when Quad Cities was a Cubs affiliate. It's now called Modern Woodmen Park and home of the Cardinals' farm team, the River Bandits.
Look at the photos! The Marlins would be lucky to have a view like the one over first base.
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/team1/page.jsp?ymd=20080606&content_id=410802&vkey=team1_t565&fext=.jsp&sid=t565)

It's no wonder that seasoned political reporters and columnists from outside of Florida, including some I know, were always mystified when they came down here and got a chance to read more than one example of the Reinhard Method, or to hear her talk on TV or radio.

It's not like they expected a patrician David Broder clone or an intellectual David Frum-type would be the leading political reporter at the Herald, since this is Miami, after all, the anti-wonk capital, but they were in no way prepared to see that things were just -as bad- as I had described in phone calls or emails about how little respect or column inches Broward County rated.
They thought I'd always been exaggerating.
Nope.

Earlier this year, after one such reporter friend had visited South Florida and had absorbed some sun and digested some bon mots de Reinhard, and returned home, she emailed me that she's sure that Reinhard probably has some special talent that we're just not privy to.

I replied that could be true but that her writing speaks for itself -mediocre and uninspiring.

Try hard to think of a column or article of her's that questioned the South Florida version of CW, or tried to get to the heart of a matter thru an unconventional approach.
Or even the last time you cut one of her article/columns out of the paper?

You can't, and like 99% of all Herald readers, once you saw the headline of one of her stories, and even more so, of one of her columns, you knew exactly what to expect.

The whole thing was telegraphed because you know she has such a small bag of tricks in her arsenal.
Plus, she never ever surprises you.

Thus, Reinhard never ever veered from her connect-the-dots script, including her failed attempts to seem like a self-effacing Tina Fey at times when it wasn't called for and only served to distract.

Reinhard was too easily pacified and seduced by CW and too often seemed pleased with herself for peddling the mundane.
She was like a slightly less-mean-spirited Tracy Flick, but failed to see the truly compelling stories all around us down here because then she'd have had to leave her comfort zone.
She didn't want to.

That so many people wouldn't return her phone calls, as she recently wrote about Marco Rubio, whom I like and will vote for but who clearly is not without his flaws, may, in fact, not be a result of their not liking what she wrote and actually be something simpler: people feeling that far too often, Reinhard had burned them.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/13/1775520/reinhard-rich-political-novices.html

That she called with the article already written in her head, and wasn't open to actually listening to their side or perspective and perhaps re-questioning her original aim with a story.
Facts should matter at least once in a while, shouldn't they?

Seriously, why would you call someone back, much less a reporter, if they won't listen to what you say, and just want to steamroll you about some topic, regardless of what it is?
You doubtless do it all the time with friends and relatives -I know I do.
Why should others be any different?

Reinhard's worst sins in my book was her low-hanging fruit sense of journalism and consistent lack of curiosity, as she failed over-and-over to give readers the sort of insight into some pol or official's motives and outlook that would be helpful to readers in understanding them, and what was going on policy-wise in anti-wonk South Florida.

It was sometimes like she was the daughter of the Beacon Council, the Chamber of Commerce and the Knight Foundation, and only wanted to please already-powerful people.
She'd tut-tut them, perhaps, but always like a loving daughter reproaching her father for something he's wearing that embarrasses her.

I didn't need every article of her's to be like a fascinating Vanity Fair profile from the early-to-mid 1990's under Clinton, but one every few YEARS might've been nice!

(Or maybe I was just spoiled by 15 years of daily reading the WaPo's Style section from 1988-2003. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/print/style/)

Seriously, after all this time, do Herald readers now have any added insight from her into why Meek, Crist or Rubio are the way they are and do what they do?

No, which is why out-of-town/national reporters so consistently seem to get to the heart of a local matter, general sense of mood or pierce a local/state political personality's facade when they drop in, yet she's always... what exactly?

(Compare anything of hers to Tim Padgett's fabulous TIME article exactly one year ago on the State of Florida, Behind Florida's Exodus: Rising Taxes, Political Ineptitude

There are many things public officials probably shouldn't do during a severe recession, but no one seems to have told the leaders in Florida about them. One thing, for instance, would be giving a dozen top aides hefty raises while urging a rise in property taxes, as the mayor of Miami-Dade County recently did. Or jacking up already exorbitant hurricane-insurance premiums, as Florida's government-run property insurer just did. Or sending an army of highly paid lobbyists to push for a steep hike in electricity rates, as South Florida's public utility is doing.

And you wonder why the Sunshine State is experiencing its first net emigration of people since World War II.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919916,00.html Though Hoosier-born Tim lives in Miami as Bureau Chief, it's the same principle.)

Rubio and Meek are both from South Florida, but despite all this proximity, Reinhard has added zero to the mix in our understanding of them or what they might do.

As I've written numerous on my blog about the media coverage of the FL-17 congressional race,
her writing about it was perhaps the best example of her lack of curiosity and imagination: dreadful writing of the sort that you'd expect from a mediocre Junior College newspaper you pick up out of boredom while waiting around for your pick-up order at a Kinko's.

The one congressional seat in South Florida that we knew last year would result in sending a 'new face' to Washington would seem like a great opportunity to re-examine some longstanding ideas about this area, and the CD that stretches from Liberty City to Hollywood, including where I live in Hallandale Beach, not far from Gulfstream Park Race Track.

Instead, there was hardly any reasonable coverage of it to speak of until a week before the election, and by then, it was written not by Reinhard but Patricia Mazzei, who's what, five years out of college?
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/17/1778997/9-seek-rare-house-seat-replacing.html

Why is the least-experienced reporter writing about THE most important local congressional race in greater Miami?

That's why it's the Herald.