Think Progress reports on Romney Campaign co-chair, John Sununu’s theory on why Colin Powell would support President Obama:
SUNUNU: You have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or that he’s got a slightly different reason for President Obama.
MORGAN: What reason would that be?
SUNUNU: Well, I think that when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being President of the United States — I applaud Colin for standing with him.
For the record, John Sununu is an intelligent and accomplished white man. He has also decided to endorse Mitt Romney, who is white, over Barack Obama, who is black. No one believes that Sununu made this decision for any reason other than the fact that he prefers Romney’s policies to Obama’s, and it would be absolutely inappropriate to suggest that Sununu joined the Romney campaign because he wanted a president of his same race. Colin Powell is also an intelligent and accomplished man. Suggesting he is unable to see beyond the president’s race is no less insulting.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday endorsed President Barack Obama for reelection. “I voted for him in 2008, and I plan to stick with him in 2012,” Powell said on CBS’s “This Morning.” “I’ll be voting for he and for Vice President Joe Biden next month.”
One of the most coveted endorsements remaining in the 2012 presidential race, Powell, a Republican, said Obama inherited a horrendous economy and has begun to turn it around. “I think, generally, we’ve come out of the dive and we’re starting to gain altitude,” said Powell, who served as George W. Bush’s secretary of state. “It doesn’t mean all our problems are solved.” Powell also took issue with some of GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s foreign policy positions, calling Romney’s stances a “moving target.”
COLIN POWELL: I signed on for a long patrol with President Obama and I don’t think this is the time to make such a sudden change. And not only am I not comfortable with what Governor Romney is proposing for his economic plan, I have concerns about his views on foreign policy. The Governor, who was speaking on Monday night at the debate, was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier. So I’m not quite sure which Governor Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What concerns do you have about Governor Romney’s foreign policy?
POWELL: Well, it’s hard to fix it. I mean, it’s a moving target. One day he has a certain strong view about staying in Afghanistan, but then on Monday night he agrees with the withdrawal. Same thing in Iraq. On almost every issue that was discussed on Monday night, Governor Romney agreed with the President with some nuances. But this is quite a different set of foreign policy views than he had earlier in the campaign. And my concern, which I’ve expressed previously in a public way, is that sometimes I don’t sense that he has thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have, and he gets advice from his campaign staff that he then has to adjust to modify as he goes along.
CHARLIE ROSE: Are you concerned about the people that are advising Governor Romney?
POWELL: I think there’s some very, very strong neo-conservative views that are presented by the Governor that I have some trouble with. There are other issues as well, not just the economy and foreign policy. I’m more comfortable with President Obama and his administration when it comes to issues like what are we going to do about climate, what are we going to do about immigration? What are we going to do about education? Lots of things like that. I do not want to see the new Obamacare plan thrown off the table. It has issues, you have to fix some things in that plan. But what I see when I look at that plan is 30 million of our fellow citizens will now be covered by insurance. And I think that’s good. We’re one of the few nations in the world, with our size, population and wealth, that does not have universal health care.”
WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY—————————–—
Mitt Romney told Mark Halperin that if he’s elected president “we’d get the unemployment rate down to 6%, and perhaps a little lower.” However, just a few weeks ago, as NBC News reported, Romney said that anything “over 4% is not cause for celebration.” ThinkProgress: “Though 6 percent unemployment is significantly lower than the current 8.1 percent rate, the feat isn’t all that remarkable. In fact, it is exactly where multiple government agencies project unemployment will be at the end of that time frame. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that unemployment will average 6.3 percent in 2016; the Office of Management and Budget, meanwhile, projects unemployment will hit 6.1 percent and ultimately fall below 6 percent the same year.” — Political Wire
Bloomberg News reported this week, “The unemployment rates in a majority of the 2012 battleground states are lower than the national average as those economies improve.” In Ohio, the jobless rate is down to 7.4%. In Virginia, it’s improved to 5.6%. Even in Nevada, where the unemployment rate is still a crushing 11.7%, the figure has dropped two points in one year, which represents rather extraordinary progress. — Maddow Blog
On Fox and Friends, Romney makes a courageous and bold stand, agreeing with Rush Limbaugh and stating “there’s no question that [Obama] is attacking capitalism.” — If he can’t even stand up to Rush, imagine Mitt standing up to N. Korea, Russia, or Iran…
… Mitt Romney clings to Rush Limbaugh, says President Obama ‘is attacking capitalism’ – First of all, on the Bain Capital controversy, the issue isn’t how often Bain was successful making money. Even if Romney thinks making money on 80 percent of his investments is impressive, so what? Nobody is saying he wasn’t good at what he did. What people are saying is that there’s nothing about what he did at Bain Capital that demonstrates he’s ready for the presidency. Moreover, the fact that he was able to make money even when the companies he invested in failed suggests that if anything, his experience at Bain bought him the wrong lessons. A president’s job isn’t to record a quarterly profit: it’s to defend America and move forward with an agenda that helps all Americans. Second, the notion that President Obama is an anti-capitalist president is really, really nuts. Since Obama took office, the stock market has soared—the Dow is nearly double what it was on January 21, 2009. Compare that with President Bush, under whose economic leadership the market fell. Or take a look at private sector job growth: despite inheriting Bush’s economic collapse, private sector jobs have actually grown since Obama took office, including four million over the last two years. Under Bush, we lost more than six hundred thousand private sector jobs. — Jed Lewison
The military’s new fighter jet project only costs $1.45 trillion – While [Gov. Rick] Scott famously refused $2 billion in federal funds for high-speed rail in Florida, deriding it as an expensive boondoggle, his team shows no such hesitations about the $1.45 trillion F-35 project. The most expensive weapons system in Pentagon history, it has suffered technical setbacks, nearly a decade of production delays, and substantial cost overruns; the Pentagon currently estimates each plane will cost $135 million to build and maintain. So it’s no surprise that the Simpson-Bowles commission pointed to halving the Navy and Air Forces’ orders and eliminating the Marines’ version as a deficit-reduction step; in 2009, the Congressional Budget Office floated a similar cut. Any such reductions would lower the $1.59 billion in economic impact that, Lockheed boasts, Florida will get from F-35 contracts held by 95 in-state suppliers. [...] During the Republican rebuttal to Obama’s 2012 State of the Union, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels ripped the president for trying to “build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars.” Yet just three months earlier, his deputy, Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman, blessed a report highlighting the stimulus brought to her state’s economy by nearly 40,000 deficit-exploding federal defense jobs. – Mother Jones
Maddow: Romney on board with the legacy of Dick Cheney — “It is not surprising that the Republican Party would not be all that enthused with about the legacy of George W. Bush, but what do you make of the fact that they all are on board with the legacy of Dick Cheney?” Maddow wondered. “Seventeen of Mitt Romney’s twenty-four foreign policy advisers are Bush-Cheney guys,” she added. “Even as Romney is shunning the endorsement and any joint appearances with the former President of the United States, George W. Bush, he is proudly publicizing and doing fundraisers with Dick Cheney.” – Raw Story
How does one position himself next to the guy who ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden? That’s part of Mitt Romney’s struggle to distinguish himself from President Obama, a Democrat who seems strong on foreign policy and national defense, New York’s Frank Rich told Rachel Maddow Wednesday night. Describing what seems to be the Romney foreign policy, Rich said, “It’s kind of an undifferentiated, generalized truculence. Russia is still the biggest enemy we have. He wants to have a trade war with China, apparently.” Rich added, “He wants to have war with Iran, it seems, even though the Obama policy is proving to be quite successful in terms of tough sanctions. It’s almost like he’s embracing the truculence Cheney represents without any real intellectual framework.” – Daily Intel
Colin Powell: “Come on Mitt, think“ – Powell expressed concerns about the Republican’s far-right advisors, especially on foreign policy, whose judgment Powell considers suspect. At one point, he urged Romney, “Come on Mitt, think” — as if to say Romney is not already thinking. Powell added that he and others in the Republican mainstream have been “taken aback” by some of the hardline positions adopted by the presumptive GOP nominee. (For context, it’s worth noting that Romney has surrounded himself with many of the worst members of the Bush/Cheney team, all of whom were wrong about nearly everything, and many of whom had no use for Powell’s vision of U.S. foreign policy.) Powell also emphasized his support for investments in education and infrastructure — “what we need to be doing,” he said — which clearly aligns him with Obama and against Romney, though he did not explicitly say so. — Steve Benen
Republican rep: Church tax exempt restrictions is like communism — Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) on Wednesday suggested that banning tax-exempt churches from participating in political campaigns or endorsing candidates was something that communist countries would do. — Raw Story
Kansas Gov. approves massive tax cut for the rich that even some Republicans opposed – Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) in January proposed a tax cut he said would give the state a “fairer, flatter, simpler” tax code, even though it raised taxes on the poor to help pay for a massive tax cut for the top one percent of state residents. Tuesday, Brownback signed an even bigger package into law, even as the state Senate’s top Republican and a host of other conservative lawmakers urged him not to. — Think Progress
WHAT THE PRESIDENT / DEMOCRATS STAND FOR ————————————
Arizona Secretary of State Decides President Obama Was Born in Hawaii After All — “I consider the matter closed,” Ken Bennett said in a statement today. Now onto verifying that Mitt Romney was born in Michigan, right? – Daily Intel
President Obama barely eked out Democratic primary wins in Kentucky and Arkansas – The president didn’t even have an opponent in Kentucky, but took just 57.9% of the vote, with the remaining more than 42 percent of ballots cast for “uncommitted.” In Arkansas, his unknown opponent, John Wolfe (D), won 41% of the vote. — Politico
So hillbillies in the Cracker Belt aren’t fond of Obama, you say? …Alec MacGillis points us to a map that shows the regions where Obama received a smaller percentage of the vote in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004. “It is a virtually contiguous band of territory stretching from southwestern Pennsylvania through Appalachia and across the Upland South, finally petering out in north-central Texas. It is, almost to a T, what Colin Woodard… defined as the territory of the ‘Borderlanders’… And look more closely at the map — where was Obama’s 2008 dropoff particularly heavy? In eastern Kentucky and most of Arkansas.” – Political Wire
Did Some Appalachian Whites Oppose Obama Because of His Race? Yes. Of Course – Long before they knew anything about how Obama would govern, or whether he’d make War on Coal, a sizable number of Appalachian whites grabbed anonymous exit poll forms and confirmed that they would vote against the guy because they didn’t like his skin color. Hard to calculate, but not impossible. — Dave Weigel
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell tells CNN he’s in favor of same-sex marriage, “either at the state or federal level”: ”I respect the fact that many denominations have different points of view with respect to gay marriage and they can hold that in the sanctity in the place of their religion and not bless them or solemnize them,” he said. He said he has “a lot of friends who are individually gay but are in partnerships with loved ones, and they are as stable a family as my family is and they raise children. And so I don’t see any reason not to say that they should be able to get married under the laws of their state or the laws of the country.” — Mother Jones
DSCC warns Super PAC donors to ‘Wake (the F*%k) Up’ – Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, figures the odds of preventing Mitch McConnell from taking Harry Reid’s gavel have improved over the last six months, to the point where he now says Democrats have a 50/50 shot at retaining the majority. But in a recent interview from his Capitol Hill office, Cecil offered his most explicit warning to date that the moneymen in the Democratic tent need to start writing checks. “The money,” Cecil told The Huffington Post, when asked what kept him up at night. “Our allies need to wake up. Our allies need to understand that the majority in the Senate is in danger and that everything from jobs and the economy and women’s health and Supreme Court justices, Wall Street reform — all the things that they have worked so hard for — will be for naught if we lose the Senate.” — HuffPo
“I am not going to back off the sequestration,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told Politico, warning that Senate Democrats will allow the automatic defense cuts agreed upon in last summer’s debt deal to go into effect unless Republicans are willing to compromise on revenues. — Think Progress
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will begin the steps today to break a Senate Republican filibuster of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which provides additional protections to ensure that women receive the same pay for the same work as their male colleagues. — Think Progress
I’m sure Sean Hannity had himself a private little cry and a nap after his interview fail with Colin Powell yesterday:
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell tonight threw a wet blanket on Sean Hannity’s longtime obsession with attacking President Obama over Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers.
During an interview with Powell on his Fox News show, Hannity said that he finds Obama to be “one of the most divisive figures in — that I’ve witnessed in politics today.”
Powell responded: “[T]hat’s a term that’s being used rather freely. I don’t think he’s that divisive an issue.” Powell then asked, “What could have been more divisive than, when President Obama was inaugurated, for a number of Republicans, friends of mine, and a number of commentators to say, ‘We’re going to destroy him. We’re going to destroy him’?”
Hannity replied: “I was one of his harshest critics. I wasn’t out to destroy him.” Hannity also asserted: “Well, I was critical about Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright.” Powell responded: “I don’t know Bill Ayers from the man in the moon. Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright are just passing things through [Obama's] life.” Hannity then said that Obama spent “20 years” in Wright’s church, to which Powell responded: “Well, so?”
Sean Hannity is a petty, little man-child. Even though he had the Snowbilly Screecher from the North Woods on his show Monday night (so they could trade their innermost secret Wright and Ayers fantasies), after this let-down from Powell, Hannity will need to bring her on again to re-fluff himself.
WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY—————————–—
BIPARTISANSHIP to the modern Republican: after defeating Sen. Dick Lugar in the Indiana primary, Richard Mourdock dismissed Lugar’s parting shot. Source: sandandglass
PART OF SEN. RICHARD LUGAR’S searing concession statement – “Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times. Certainly this was understood by President Reagan, who worked with Democrats frequently and showed flexibility that would be ridiculed today — from assenting to tax increases in the 1983 Social Security fix, to compromising on landmark tax reform legislation in 1986, to advancing arms control agreements in his second term. I don’t remember a time when so many topics have become politically unmentionable in one party or the other. Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc… If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than a leader…” – Ezra Klein
COLIN POWELL: War with Iraq was never debated — Former Secretary of State Colin Powell provides what may be the most authoritative confirmation yet that there was never a considered debate in the George W. Bush White House about whether going to war in Iraq was really a good idea. [...] “By then, the President did not think war could be avoided,” Powell writes. “He had crossed the line in his own mind, even though the NSC [National Security Council] had never met — and never would meet — to discuss the decision.” – HuffPo
MICHELE BACHANN granted dual Swiss-American citizenship – “Congresswoman Bachmann’s husband is of Swiss descent so she has been eligible for dual-citizenship since they got married in 1978,” said her spokeswoman Becky Rogness said in a statement given to the Politico.com website and other US media…“Recently some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual-citizenship so they went through the process as a family,” the spokeswoman said. – Raw Story
BACHMANN HAS ISSUES with the truth — even about this: Her statement that she has been a citizen since 1978 is based off a technicality – at the time of her marriage, automatic citizenship was granted to those who married Swiss citizens. However, Marcus Bachmann, her husband, did not register their marriage with Swiss authorities until this year – meaning that the Swiss government was not aware of it until recently. — Politico
AS A CITIZEN OF SWITZERLAND, Bachmann [and her kids] can now partake in a healthcare system that is the envy of the world. It has transparent costs, it is consumer driven, and it provides near universal coverage. It also has an individual mandate: all Swiss citizens are required to purchase basic health insurance. You may recall that the current Supreme Court challenge against Obamacare rests on the contention that its health insurance mandate is unconstitutional. The Swiss mandate seems to only apply to all residents of Switzerland, so Bachmann may be able to get out of it by not living there full time. – The Daily Beast
PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS————————————————————
OBAMA: ‘Same sex couples should be able to get married’ – It’s a breakthrough moment for a president who already has a rather impressive record on advancing LGBT rights, and an unexpected step forward for the gay-rights movement. — Steve Benen[image: drunkonstevphen]
That isn’t an “impressive” record. It’s AMAZING. That’s what flummoxes me about many activists. Those are real accomplishments, yet we still had folks (Dan Choi, Aravosis, I’m looking at you) flaming the President. …What is listed here are real actions. …But even if Obama had maintained his earlier position on same-sex marriage, he still has done more to advance gay rights than any other President, by a ridiculously wide margin. Faced with a congress more hostile than what Bill Clinton ever faced, he is UNDOING much of the damage inflicted on the gay community by none other than Bill Clinton. — John Cole
REID DRAWS A LINE on Rolling Back Sequester – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced yesterday that Senate Democrats would not agree to replace mandated spending cuts unless Republicans agree to a “balanced” approach that asks the wealthy to help pay for it. – Roll Call
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS sees a lesson for the United States in the European elections — “In the United States and around the world, the middle class is in steep decline while the wealthy and large corporations are doing phenomenally well. The message sent by voters in France and other European countries, which I believe will be echoed here in the United States, is that the wealthy and large corporations are going to have to experience some austerity also and that that burden cannot solely fall on working families. In the United States, where corporate profits are soaring and the gap between the rich and everybody else is growing wider, we must end corporate tax loopholes and start making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. At the same time, we must protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Austerity, yes, but for millionaires and billionaires, not the working families of this country.” — Crooks & Liars
FROM PETER ORSZAG, after reporting on new evidence that the incomes of the very rich are far more sensitive to economic growth than in the past:If anything, high-earning households should be the ones most in favor of aggressively boosting the economy in the short run — and not just out of benevolence. Yet I suspect, without definitive proof, that support for additional stimulus declines as one moves up the income scale. – Well, I suspect that he suspects right. I also suspect that the very rich (a) just flatly don’t believe that Keynesian stimulus works, and (b) know for sure that tax cuts will increase their disposable incomes. So it’s Team Austerity for them. Sure, they’ll have to ride out the bad times by letting one of the yacht scrubbers go, but everyone has to make sacrifices, right? — Kevin Drum
Colin Powell, 2008: “I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to [say] such things as, ‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, ‘He’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.’ This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”
President Obama barely eked out Democratic primary wins in Kentucky and Arkansas – The president didn’t even have an opponent in Kentucky, but took just 57.9% of the vote, with the remaining more than 42 percent of ballots cast for “uncommitted.” In Arkansas, his unknown opponent, John Wolfe (D), won 41% of the vote. — 
DSCC warns Super PAC donors to ‘Wake (the F*%k) Up’ – Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, figures the odds of preventing Mitch McConnell from taking Harry Reid’s gavel have improved over the last six months, to the point where he now says Democrats have a 50/50 shot at retaining the majority. But in a recent interview from his Capitol Hill office, Cecil offered his most explicit warning to date that the moneymen in the Democratic tent need to start writing checks. “The money,” Cecil told The Huffington Post, when asked what kept him up at night. “Our allies need to wake up. Our allies need to understand that the majority in the Senate is in danger and that everything from jobs and the economy and women’s health and Supreme Court justices, Wall Street reform — all the things that they have worked so hard for — will be for naught if we lose the Senate.” — 
MICHELE BACHANN granted dual Swiss-American citizenship – “Congresswoman Bachmann’s husband is of Swiss descent so she has been eligible for dual-citizenship since they got married in 1978,” said her spokeswoman Becky Rogness said in a statement given to the Politico.com website and other US media…“Recently some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual-citizenship so they went through the process as a family,” the spokeswoman said. – 
OBAMA: ‘Same sex couples should be able to get married’ – It’s a breakthrough moment for a president who already has a 
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS sees a lesson for the United States in the European elections — “In the United States and around the world, the middle class is in steep decline while the wealthy and large corporations are doing phenomenally well. The message sent by voters in France and other European countries, which I believe will be echoed here in the United States, is that the wealthy and large corporations are going to have to experience some austerity also and that that burden cannot solely fall on working families. In the United States, where corporate profits are soaring and the gap between the rich and everybody else is growing wider, we must end corporate tax loopholes and start making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. At the same time, we must protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Austerity, yes, but for millionaires and billionaires, not the working families of this country.” — 
