Last night, Marco Rubio keynoted South Carolina Silver Elephant dinner in Columbia. There he called President Obama the most “divisive figure” in modern American history. Today, the Democratic National Committee is firing back. “Marco Rubio’s attacks on the president are as dishonest as they are desperate,” DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse said in a statement. “No one has tried [...]
Newt Gingrich ended his campaign earlier this month with nearly $4.8 million in campaign debt, according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission that reflected campaign activity through the end of April. Several Florida firms, including a couple of mom-and-pop printing companies, are listed on Gingrich’s debt report and, with Gingrich’s campaign unlikely [...]
Is it just me or is the continuing Ron Paul not-an-insurrection the key under-the-radar story of the spring? “After years of quiet, relentless organizing, followers of libertarian-leaning GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul have exploded inside the Minnesota Republican Party, becoming its most potent army,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports via The Political Wire. Paul won 12 of [...]
Editor’s note: Put out your hand and meet P.A.W. — the Political Ad Watch club coming together to offer a critical take on the soon-to-be-unending stream of political commercials. As new commercials are released by candidates and campaigns running in the Sunshine State, a not-too-select group of political aficionados will offer their expert opinions on [...]
Get your checkbooks ready, PAC chairs and uber-lobbyists, there are several fundraisers for political candidates throughout the state planned for this week. Here’s a partial lineup. Pinellas County Commissioner Neil Brickfield has a fundraiser planned for his re-election on Monday. Speaker Designate Will Weatherford is the draw for a major fundraiser for Rep. Peter Nehr [...]
Just 100 days away from the Republican convention and the Tampa Bay Times reports organizers are “starting to tackle one of the trickiest and most important elements of the convention — selecting the speakers.” “It’s a matter of juggling monumental political egos, precious little time for maximum TV exposure, appeasing people whose help is needed, and ensuring [...]
Adam Frank appreciates The Avenger’s adherence to Clarke’s Law: [T]he mysterious “Tesseract” driving The Avengers plot is either a divine artifact of great power or a cube containing that most scientific of entities — Dark Energy. Likewise the portals between distant parts of this fictional universe are either the “Rainbow Bridges” of ancient myth or wormholes of modern general [...]
Gov. Rick Scott has spent the past several months talking about two big issues: adding jobs and bolstering the public-education system. So Scott could preen a little Friday when new figures showed the state’s unemployment rate had dropped to 8.7 percent in April, down 0.3 percentage points from March and 1.9 points from April 2011. [...]
There was an interesting moment last week as the National Defense Authorization Act was being voted on. An amendment, introduced by two Congressmen, would have terminated the F-35B program in favor of buying the Marine Corps more F/A 18s. When the amendment reached the floor, House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith (D-WA) spoke out [...]
After a white-knuckle final 20 minutes of the day, shares of Facebook managed to just keep one nostril above $38, the level where the IPO priced last night. Why did it never fall below $38? Joe Weisenthal explains that, basically, because the underwriters of the IPO (Morgan Stanley, et. al.) bid heavily right at $38 to make sure there was [...]
