Good morning! Here’s your daily digest of money-in-politics news and the headlines of the day, compiled by BillMoyers.com’s John Light. (You can sign up to receive Morning Reads daily in your inbox!)
GOPers on the economy –>Last night’s Republican talkfest took a stab at discussing policy but the big target was the media, with the candidates attacking their questioners and the press in general as liberal and obsessed with “gotcha.” The NYT has a full transcript and some fact checks. Mother Jones offers nine big moments.
Pundits gave Ted Cruz a lot of points for his ranty speech about how the media have handled the GOP debates. But Vox’s Ezra Klein wasn’t having it. He writes: “Cruz’s attack on the moderators was smart politics — but it was almost precisely backwards. The questions in the CNBC debate, though relentlessly tough, were easily the most substantive of the debates so far. And the problem for Republicans is that substantive questions about their policy proposals end up sounding like hostile attacks — but that’s because the policy proposals are ridiculous, not because the questions are actually unfair.”
Jeb Bush didn’t say much –> Jamelle Bouie at Slate: “… It was do or die. And Bush died… Bush had the least speaking time of any candidate on stage. Worse, he was on the losing end of a tough exchange,” his attempted attack on Marco Rubio for his Senate absences. AND: Politico’s Alex Isenstadt reports that while Jeb might be headed gently into that good night, his campaign manager, Danny Diaz, is making some noise. Diaz picked a fight “about the way the debate was managed and the amount of time [we got]” with a CNBC producer outside the debate — as it was happening.
Meanwhile –> Sanders and Clinton are beginning to get more aggressive with one another. That’s ok, argues Greg Sargent at The Washington Post’s Plum Line, “That’s what primaries are for.”
Back from the dead? –> The Federal Election Commission has long been moribund, paralyzed by partisan differences as campaign cash defiantly floods America. But that might be changing. Eric Lichtblau at NYT: “Lawyers for the Federal Election Commission have concluded that some of the aggressive fund-raising tactics commonly used this campaign season by the candidates and ‘super PACs’ should not be allowed under federal law, setting up what promises to be a heated debate Thursday on the issue between Democratic and Republican commissioners.”
Ryan’s got it –> Paul Ryan won the Republican nomination for Speaker of the House yesterday afternoon. The AP writes, via The Guardian, that it was a secret-ballot election, which will help protect House members from right-wing anti-Ryan voters during next year’s primaries.
Budget deal lurches across finish line –> David Herszenhorn at The New York Times: “The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly adopted a crucial bipartisan budget accord that in one relatively tight 144-page bill stands to end five years of bitter clashes between Republicans and the Obama administration over fiscal policy, allowing Mr. Boehner to fulfill his metaphorical pledge.”
Boehner says goodbye –> NPR offers up 10 moments from his exit interview with the press. The speaker said he warned Ryan, “This is the loneliest place in the world.”
School officer fired –> That white in-school police officer we told you about yesterday who threw a black student across the room was fired. Emma Brown, T. Rees Shapiro and Elahe Izadi have more at The Washington Post.
Tension in the high seas –> An American missile destroyer has been floating around in the politically fraught South China Sea, making China quite angry. Vox’s Zack Beauchamp explains what that’s about: “China is claiming important chunks of territory in the South China Sea, making its neighbors really nervous. America is taking the neighbors’ side, but not just because it wants to side against China.” According to Reuters, high-level officials from the US and China will hold a video conference today to try to come to an agreement,
Losing on its home turf –> David Gutman at the Charleston Gazette-Mail writes, “Coal consumption is not likely to increase, regardless of whether new federal regulations on power plants go into effect, and, from coal’s perspective, the national debate on coal and climate change has largely been lost, the president of West Virginia’s largest electric utility told a roomful of energy executives Tuesday.”
Just say meh –> Mitch McConnell’s strategy encouraging states to “just say no” to Obama’s Clean Power Plan “appears to be crumbling,” writes Jean Chemnick at Greenwire. Instead, states are banking on the success of legal challenges to the law, while coming up with plans to comply if they fail.
Silver linings –> The always excellent Thomas B. Edsall argues at The New York Times that, in a way, the Supreme Court did progressives a favor with Citizens United: It forced them to rethink their decades-long fight to stem the influence of money on federal races and instead come up with new strategies that are paying off at the state level.
I am fun –> “Hillary Clinton” makes her case at The Onion. The real Hillary’s campaign responded with an actually funny, “self-aware” tweet.
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