Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

Immigration reform advocates hold signs of young immigrant “dreamers” during a protest outside a fund raising event for Texas Senator Ted Cruz on May 29, 2013 in Manhattan, New York City.

Jeb Bush is taking a Twitter-ribbing today for saying that immigrants are more “fertile.” What he meant was, they have more babies, not that they have a greater ability to procreate.

Yet the former Florida governor had a more serious message overlooked in the instant social media: “Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity.”

“Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans,” Bush said. “Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population.”

Which is his rationale for reforming the nation’s immigration laws to provide a lawful role for the undocumented as well newcomers to the U.S. while tightening control of the border — the mantra that fellow Florida Republican Marco Rubio has adapted in Washington.

“We’re facing a crisis on the family front today,” Bush said at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, pointing to the fact that 42 percent of children are born out of wedlock. “We have to reclaim the family as a force for good…. We have to be supportive of a single mom or dad, a grandparent taking care of children… The goal should be the outcome.”

What he did not say is something that Ralph Reed, coalition founder, said there: “I would say this to those who say that we should ride in the back of the bus, that our issues are a liability,” said Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition. “When it comes to the sanctity of human life… when it comes to the sacred sacrament of a man and woman as the foundation of marriage,… we cannot be silent.”

Bush did speak of his conversion to Catholicism, first for his wife of 39 years, the Mexican-born Columba Bush, and later strengthened by his study of the sacraments — including the church’s commitment to the “God-given” virtue of life. (Applause from the audience.)

“Things are not as black and white as they used to be,” said Bush, 60 now. “There’s a lot more gray now, particularly on my head.”

Bush, who served two terms as governor of the fourth-largest state, is a son and brother of two former presidents. He is widely viewed as a Republican who has escaped the bounds of the bright lines of religious right orthodoxy the Reed and associates have drawn, and is, for that and other reasons, electable — “fertile,” in the political sense of the word.

He will appear Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week,” where his views on immigration will be pressed – his book, Immigration Wars, takes a different tack than Rubio’s on the question of a path to citizenship for the undocumented, though he concedes that he can live with that, too. More blurred lines.

He probably won’t answer the one question everyone is asking: whether he will run for president in 2016. His own family is divided on that question, he notes — mother Barbara says the country has had enough Bushes as presidents.

“I think we’ve got a split ballot amongst the Bush senior family,” Bush says with a smile in the interview airing Sunday, according to ABC News. “Pretty sure that’s the case.”

Original post is Jeb Bush: Politically ‘Fertile’ by Political Capital.

Bloomberg’s Heidi Przybyla reported he would last week.

.@jimdemint: Proposed #immigration reform bill would cost U.S. trillions of dollars in the long term. #ThisWeek

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 5, 2013

In 2007, the last time Congress attempted to overhaul a system permitting millions to live undocumented in the U.S., the Heritage Foundation predicted costs in the trillions — costs borne by the nation’s public assistance and safety-net programs. Under its new president, the former Republican senator from South Carolina, Heritage will reprise that line of attack.

“The study you’ll see from Heritage this week presents a staggering cost of another amnesty in our country,” DeMint said this morning on ABC News’ “This Week,” based on the “detrimental effects long-term” of government benefits that would eventually go to the millions offered a path to citizenship under the reform legislation currently being considered. “There’s no reason we can’t begin to fix our immigration system so that we won’t make this problem worse. But the bill that’s being presented is unfair to those who came here legally. It will cost Americans trillions of dollars. It’ll make our unlawful immigration system worse.”

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the Cato Institute and others already have weighed in with a countervailing argument: The benefit to the economy of millions of people finding a potential path to citizenship and with that the tax revenue generated by legal employment.

DeMint today is reiterating what Heritage’s Mike Gonzalez said last week as Bloomberg’s Washington bureau reported on all this: He fully supports legal immigration — but not the “amnesty” that comes with offering 11 million undocumented people a path to citizenship. In the 800-page bill that a bipartisan group of senators has advanced — and which the Senate Judiciary Committee will start examining on Thursday — DeMint warns of another behemoth that nobody is really reading. Like “Obamacare.”

Gang of Eight immigration bill is just like #Obamacare. @jimdemint asks Americans to read the bill. #ThisWeek

— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) May 5, 2013

.@jimdemint: If people read the bill, it will be blocked. #ThisWeek

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 5, 2013

Heritage will have to contend with another senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, who is taking the Holtz-Eakin path to passage of the immigration bill with fellow senators of both parties. And still other Republicans will find their party riven along a line which some of them say is essential to the party’s future, re-engaging with Hispanic voters who helped re-elect President Barack Obama. That line runs between Florida’s Marco Rubio, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, and Texas’sTed Cruz, a freshly minted DeMint kind of senator.

That line will be drawn bright this week, as Heritage, and the bill, take the stage.

Original post is Jim DeMint’s Sugar-Free Taste of Immigration Bill: ‘Like Obamacare’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Delegates watch a video about former President George W. Bush at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Tampa, Florida.

“After the most unpopular second term of the post-World War II era, ” pollster Gary Langer reports, former President George W. Bush “has gained in public esteem as time since his presidency has passed – not that the public’s ready yet to throw him bouquets.”

As President Barack Obama and others head to Dallas this week for the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center — a library, museum and research institute at the campus of Southern Methodist University — ABC News and the Washington Post have done some polling on the stature of the 43rd president. Bush’s approval ratings remain upside down in most cases, though he has recovered some ground.

His first term opened with a bid to reform education, and produced the No Child Left Behind Act by year’s end. It also saw the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which overran much of his domestic agenda for the remainder of that term — save for some tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. It saw an invasion of Afghanistan in retaliation for 9/11, with a war that has run more than a decade, and it brought an invasion of Iraq in pursuit of suspected weapons of mass destruction that never materialized. More than 6,000 Americans have died in those wars — the Iraq war still largely unpopular. His hopes of overhauling immigration laws were set aside during that first term, and defeated in the Senate in his second term.

Bush left office in January 2009 with record-low approval ratings.

Now, Langer reports for ABC and the Post, Bush’s overall approval rating is 14 percentage points higher than at the end of his second term, his approval for handling of the economy 19 points higher, “and he’s gained, although more slightly, on the Iraq war as well.’

This is not unusual. “In polls four to five years after the end of their presidencies, Bush’s father gained 18 points in approval, but Bill Clinton slipped by 4 and Ronald Reagan lost 12,” Langer writes. ”(Reagan later improved in retrospect; it just took more time.)”

“Bush left office with just 33 percent approval, and a disapproval rating, 66 percent, that tied the disgraced Richard Nixon as the highest on record for a departing president in polls since the Roosevelt administration. Bush’s approval rating on average across his second-term, for its part, stands alone as the lowest on record in modern polling.”

“With his improvements since returning to Texas, Bush remains negatively rated on two central issues of his presidency, but more narrowly so than when he was in office. The public by 53-43 percent disapproves of his handling of the economy, compared with 73-24 percent in late 2008. And this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds that Americans by 57-40 percent disapprove of his decision to invade Iraq. That compares with a 65-33 percent negative rating for his handling the situation there in mid-2008.”

The survey of 1,000 adults was run April 17-21 and has a possible margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

See the full ABC/Post Poll here.

See Bush camp celebration here:

As Pres Bush gets ready 2retake the stage, his approval rating is up to 47%. Same level as Pres Obama wapo.st/11H9Lku

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) April 23, 2013

Original post is Bush Revisited: Regaining Lost Ground by Political Capital.

Photograph by J Pat Carter/AP Photo

Student Federico Paseiro wears a T-Shirt with a message that reads “Undocumented,” at a meeting for “Dreamers’ Moms” March 20, 2013 at a Miami church.

A path to citizenship?

A partisan divide?

It depends on the question.

With a Washington Post/ABC News poll today showing that 57 percent of registered voters support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, it finds that only 35 percent of Republicans do — part of the equation that Republican leaders in Washington are weighing in an immigration debate in which that path is the pivot on which passage of any legislation may turn.

Yet, as the folks at Talking Points Memo note — and Pew Research Center pollster Carroll Doherty readily concurs (calling it a “no-brainer that wording matters”)– it depends on how the question is asked:

See this @tpm review of recent immigration polls. No brainer thatwording matters, but so true on immigration. tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/04/republ…

— Carroll Doherty (@CarrollDoherty) April 3, 2013

“A Brookings Institution/Public Religion Resarch Institute poll last month found majority support for citizenship among Republicans (53 percent) and a variety of GOP-leaning demographics like white evangelicals, but asked respondents in the context of whether they preferred the earned citizenship approach to a policy of mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

 Pew found that 64 percent of Republicans favored granting some legal status to the undocumented population, but only 38 percent thought this new status should include a path to citizenship. “In that case, TPM notes, “Pew asked respondents whether they thought `there should be a way for those who meet certain requirements to stay in the country legally’ or whether `they should not be allowed to stay in the country legally,’ avoiding the harsher deportation language used by Brookings.”

Original post is Path to Citizenship Partisan? It Depends by Political Capital.

Photograph by Robert MacPherson/AFP via Getty Images

Wayne MacKenzie, left, and Clayton Zook admire their wedding rings after exchanging vows January 1, 2013 at Black Walnut Point Inn on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

Support for gay marriage has reached a new high in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, “marking a dramatic change in public attitudes on the subject across the past decade,” pollster Gary Langer reports.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans surveyed now say it should be legal for gay and lesbian couples to wed.

Support has grown from a low of 32 percent in a 2004 ABC survey of registered voters, Langer notes, `advancing to a narrow majority for the first time only two years ago, and now up again to a significant majority for the first time.”

Word of the latest polling arrives as some high-profile players in both parties announce their own personal evolution to support of same-sex marriage: Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state, senator from New York and first lady, produced a video explaining her thinking, and Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, announced support last week as he revealed he has a son who is gay.

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments over the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s state constitutional ban on gay marriage, most Americans say the U.S. Constitution should trump state laws on gay marriage.

Looking at political lines, 72 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents favor legalizing gay marriage, as opposed to far fewer Republicans, 34 percent. Nevertheless, support is up by 18 points among Republicans since 2004, as well as by 24 and 29 points among independents and Democrats, respectively.

The survey of 1,001 adults was run March 7-10, with  a possible margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Original post is Gay Marriage: Public Support Rising by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Speaker of the House John Boehner speaks during a press briefing March 14, 2013 at the Capitol in Washington, DC.

Updated at 11:30 am EDT

House Speaker John Boehner has given at the office.

And he’s not giving any more on taxes, he reasserted today.

The Ohio Republican, in an interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz airing on “This Week” today, said that any talk of including new tax revenue as part of a so-called grand bargain with the White House on taming the federal deficit is “over.”

“The president believes that we have to have more taxes from the American people. We’re not going to get very far,” Boehner said. “The president got his tax hikes on January 1. The talk about raising revenue is over. It’s time to deal with the spending problem.”

Like the president, who sat for an interview with ABC News last week, the speaker says the United States does not face an immediate debt problem. However, the White House maintains that any effort to rein in the deficit should include a “balanced” approach of tax revenue and spending cuts.

“We do not have an immediate debt crisis – but we all know that we have one looming,” he said. “And we have one looming because we have entitlement programs that are not sustainable in their current form. They’re going to go bankrupt.”

“Hope springs eternal,” Boehner said of a possible budget deal. He maintains that he has a “very good relationship” with the president, “absolutely” trusts him and considers the “charm offensive” that Obama has mounted in the past two weeks — dining with Republican senators and meeting with both parties’ caucuses in both chambers at the Capitol — a “good thing.”

“It’s always a good thing to engage in more conversation, engage more members in the conversation that have not been involved up to this point,” he said.

Asked about the rifts within his own party, Boehner said:

“There’s nothin’ wrong with the principles of our party. But Republicans have not done as an effective job as we should in terms of talking about our principles in terms that average people can appreciate — why balancing the budget, as an example, would be good for American families. We’ve got to do a better job of helping people understand what our principles are in terms that they deal with every day. ”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was ready with another take on that question today:

– 72 percent of Americans “Disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are doing their jobs.” According to a Washington Post ABC News poll, 72 percent of poll respondents disapprove of Congressional Republicans.”

– 62 percent of Americans say the Republican Party is “Out of Touch,” 52 Percent Say Republicans Are “Too Extreme.” According to a February 2013 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center: “Sixty-two percent of adults say the GOP is out of touch with the American people, 56 percent say it’s not open to change and 52 percent say it’s too extreme, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday.”

Original post is Boehner: Tax Talk ‘Over’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Guillaume Meyer/AFP via Getty Images

Gun show goers look at various assault-style weapons at the Nation’s Gun Show in Chantilly, Virginia.

More than nine in 10 Americans favor mandatory background checks for purchases at gun shows,  according to a poll out today.

The ABC News/Washington Post survey showed 91 percent supporting such checks, with 8 percent opposing them. Making illegal gun sales a federal crime was backed by 82 percent, with 15 percent in opposition.

President Barack Obama’s call to ban military-style assault weapons is supported by 57 percent and opposed by 41 percent.

The findings came as the Senate Judiciary Committee today passed legislation to expand background checks for most gun purchases. The committee last week voted to increase penalties for gun trafficking. It faces tough opposition in the House.

The poll of 1,001 adults was conducted March 7-10 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Original post is Background Checks for Gun-Buyers: Poll Finds Overwhelming Support by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Corbin J. Shea/Navy Media Content Services via Bloomberg

Aviation ordnanceman practice color guard drills aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) in the Atlantic Ocean on Feb. 15, 2013.

The public apparently has little sympathy for complaints about the across-the-board cutting ordered in most discretionary federal spending.

The public is more concerned, a poll shows, about the cuts in Defense spending.

By a margin of 61 percent to 33 percent, people surveyed by ABC News and the Washington Post support the non-defense budget cutting that started Friday.

By a nearly identical margin, ABC reports, they oppose the cut in military spending.

The poll run by Langer Research Associates  found support for the non-defense cuts among Democrats (57 percent) and Republicans (75 percent) as well — while opposition to the defense cuts ran 73 percent among Republicans and split Democrats “down the middle.”

This would appear to place little pressure on Congress to restore much of the cuts as it writes a spending plan for the remainder of the fiscal year ending in September. Yet it would also tend to support a move in Washington to give the Pentagon more discretion over how the cuts are implemented, rather than requiring them across the board.

That work starts today in the House, with a March 27 deadline for writing a new budget.

Original post is Most Cuts OK, Not Defense: Poll by Political Capital.

Photograph by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Attorney General Eric Holder during a news conference at the Justice Department in this file photo.

Attorney General Eric Holder has a message for the Republicans and Democrats who voted to hold him in contempt in 2012: You get no respect.

Holder, who has never made a secret of his displeasure with the 255 lawmakers who made him the first Cabinet member ever held in contempt by a chamber of Congress, said this week that the event actually didn’t faze him.

“I have to tell you that for me to really be affected by what happened, I’d have to have respect for the people who voted in that way,” Holder said in an interview with ABC News. “And I didn’t, so it didn’t have that huge an impact on me.”

It didn’t take long for some on Capitol Hill to take offense to the broadside.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who led the investigation into the botched federal gun probe known as “Fast and Furious”  that got Holder into hot water, said the attorney general is among the “highly partisan figures” in Washington “who are arrogantly dismissive of those who question them and demand transparency.”

“Attorney General Holder’s admission that he does not respect the Democratic and Republican Members of Congress who voted to hold him in contempt offers a window into why Washington is so dysfunctional,” Issa, whose committee has sued Holder for access to documents related to Fast and Furious, said in a statement.

Holder, who was cleared of any involvement in the bungled gun operation, probably could have timed his comments a little better. He testifies on Capitol Hill next week.

Original post is Holder to Congress: No Respect by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

President Barack Obama walks to the White House, with just three days until the $85 billion in reductions for this year are scheduled to start.

Two surveys out today show Americans siding with President Barack Obama over congressional Republicans on how best to address the automatic spending cuts due to take effect March 1.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll taken Feb. 20-24 showed 67 percent disapproving of the way congressional Republicans were handling federal spending, 15 points worse than the 52 percent disapproving of Obama. The poll showed 43 percent approving of the way Obama was handling spending and 26 percent saying the same about Republicans in Congress. The survey of 1,021 adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Republicans didn’t fare any better in a Feb. 21-24 survey by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal. Asked about the most important compromise Obama and Republicans should strike, respondents chose as No. 1 eliminating tax loopholes for the wealthy, which the president has proposed to offset the effects of the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration. Just 29 percent said they agreed with most of the congressional Republican agenda, while 57 percent disagreed. The poll showed 45 percent supporting most of what Obama has proposed and 46 percent disagreeing. That survey of 1,000 adults had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Obama and congressional Democrats have proposed offsetting some of the spending cuts with higher taxes on wealthy Americans, primarily by closing loopholes that benefit them. House Republicans last year voted to offset defense cuts by reducing federal funding for food stamps and other domestic programs and remain opposed to higher taxes.

Original post is Polls Backing Obama on Sequestration by Political Capital.