Photograph by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images

Republican supporters gets ready to hold a South Carolina Faith & Freedom Coalition Event in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on January 16, 2012.

Gary Bauer will be here.

That will take us back to the presidential campaign of 2000, when the former president of the Family Research Council sought the Republican Party’s presidential nomination with a fervent anti-abortion campaign.

Sarah Palin is on the roster. That will take us back to 2008, when the former Alaska governor was the Republican nominee for vice president.

And so are Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Georgia businessman Herman Cain (“9-9-9”) and retiring Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, which will take us back to 2012, when all of them sought the Republican presidential nomination.

Yet the ones to watch at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference getting under way in Washington this morning are the ones who may take us to 2016.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have the lunch hour slot today at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is on this evening. And former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is on the roster Friday morning.

Paul and Cruz already have made some intentions about a 2016 presidential campaign known with forays to Iowa and South Carolina. Rubio is viewed by many as another possible contender. And Bush is the party’s equivalent of a one-man bull pen — they could put him in at any time and he’d become an instant front-runner.

This is a gathering of the base, featuring some, such as Cruz, who want nothing to do with the immigration reform that is putting Rubio front and center in his party’s bid to reach a broader audience in 2016. This is a crowd traditionally warm to the words of a Bauer or Bachmann, the religious right.

It will present a challenge for the likes of Bush or Rubio to demonstrate their fealty to the most conservative members of their party while articulating a vision that plays beyond a Republican Party primary — if they have such intentions.

Original post is Rubio, Paul, Cruz, Bush: Together Again by Political Capital.

Photograph by Eraldo Peres/AP Photo

Vice President Joe Biden during a joint-statement with Brazil’s Vice President Michel Temer at the Itamaraty palace in Brasilia, on May 31, 2013.

A couple of vice presidents past and present showed up last night at a Washington fundraiser.

The sitting VP, Joe Biden, a veteran of three-plus decades in the U.S. Senate, had some rough words for a couple of first-term Republican senators, the Tea Party-backed Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

“Think about this,” Biden said, as reported by the Boston Globe’s Matt Viser, covering the $250,000 fundraiser for Rep. Ed Markey’s Senate campaign. “Have you ever seen a time when two freshman senators are able to cower the bulk of the Republican Party in the Senate? That is not hyperbole.”

Biden, point man for the Obama administration’s gun safety agenda in the aftermath of the Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school slayings, said he had called 17 senators, including nine Republicans, to figure out why the Senate couldn’t pass a bill expanding background checks for gun-buyers.

“Not one of them offered an explanation on the merits of why they couldn’t vote for the background check,” Biden said. “But almost to a person, they said, ‘I don’t want to take on Ted Cruz. I don’t want to take on Rand Paul. They’ll be in my district.’”

“I actually said, ‘Are you kidding? These are two freshman,’” Biden added. “This is a different, party folks.”

President Barack Obama is bound for Boston today to campaign for Markey. Biden suggests that without Obama “at the head of the ticket” in the special election June 25, Democrats should not take that contest for granted — recent polling shows Markey with a narrowing advantage over Republican Gabriel Gomez.

“The last thing in the world we need now is someone who will go down to the United States Senate and support Ted Cruz, support the new senator from Kentucky — or the old senator from Kentucky,” Biden said, in ABC News take on the fundraiser this morning.

Vicki Kennedy, widow of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, was there last night as well. She told Biden: “Just one little word, Joe, if I could say: `You are like E.F. Hutton in this town. When you speak, people listen.”

As for Gore, who first was elected to the House along with Markey in the class of 1976 and won the popular vote for president but lost in the Electoral College in 2000, Kennedy said: “In my house we still call him president.”

“I want to make a direct admission here,” Biden said, in the ABC News account, pointing to the “Romney-rich” man who lost an election but made $70 million in a deal with Al Jazeera and $30 million selling stock in Apple. “I’ve been talking with Al for a while. I’m, quite frankly, just lobbying for a job, when I leave, with Al.”

Original post is Biden: Blistering Cruz, Paul — Wondering if Gore Has a Job for Him by Political Capital.

“Does my colleague from Florida believe that the House of Representatives, dominated by Republicans, are going to raise the debt limit?” McCain asked Rubio.

The Senate and House have each passed a budget resolution. Now the chambers must agree to go to conference to bridge the gaps between the Democrat and Republican fiscal plans. Democratic leaders in the Senate must ask for unanimous consent to appoint conferees to the budget.

The list of Senators who have objected to these requests reads like a Tea-Party all-star lineup: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Sens. Cruz of Texas, Rubio of Florida, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky have all objected to allowing conferees to the budget unless Democrats guarantee not to raise the debt limit or increase taxes.

“We’re talking about a minority within a minority,” McCain said today about his Tea Party-affiliated colleagues. In a rare moment of bipartisanship, he joined Democrats in lamenting that “we can’t go to conference unless we agree not to raise the debt limit.”

McCain ceded the floor after informing the chamber that “the majority of my colleagues on this side of the aisle” want to complete work on the budget.

“What we’re saying here on this side of the aisle is we don’t trust our colleagues on the other side of the Capitol who are in the majority,” he said.

Cruz responded quickly by saying, “Let me be clear: I don’t trust the Republicans and I don’t trust the Democrats,” in regards to handling the raising of the debt ceiling.

Rubio echoed Cruz, pointing out that America’s fiscal well-being “is not a trivial matter.” Republicans’ request to Democrats is not “some ridiculous thing,” he said.

“I’m not asking that the key lime pie be made the official pie of the United States,” Rubio said.

Only one Democratic senator added his voice to the floor fray: Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin interrupted to observe that members of the minority party “seem to be at odds.”

Original post is McCain, Tea Party Senators Squabble Over Budget Procedure by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, listens to a question during a news conference after the weekly Democratic Policy Committee meeting in Washington, D.C.

“Like schoolyard bullies, if Republicans can’t win, they’ll take the ball and go home,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid complained during his session-opener this morning.

The Nevada Democrat was referring to the  impasse between House and Senate on how to proceed toward a budget agreement. Both chambers have passed their own budget resolutions with huge differences remaining between the Republican and Democratic versions.

The Senate budget resolution, passed earlier this year on a party-line vote, was the first one to clear the chamber in almost five years.

Reid acknowledged this delay explaining that his counterparts, “Ask and then ask again for the Senate to pass a budget resolution… Well they got what they wished. The dog finally caught the car.”

With unanimous consent, the majority leader could appoint conferees from the Senate to iron out differences with colleagues in the House, but Republicans thus far have objected to his requests.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz did just that last night on the Senate floor as he attempted to instruct conferees on the budget to not raise taxes or the debt ceiling. The objection earned the ire of the majority leader this morning as Reid, without naming him, singled out Cruz.

“Last night, a very junior senator from Texas said Republicans would agree to go to conference only if Democrats first would give in to their demands,” Reid explained. “Maybe the junior senator from Texas doesn’t remember, but we remember. We remember the government being on the verge of losing its ability to be part of the world community by not paying its debts.”

Feigning Senatorial cordiality, he continued: “My friend – I’m sorry – the junior Senator from Texas said he wanted a guarantee that as a bargaining pawn that we would make sure that the debt ceiling would not be raised.”

After the name-calling and finger pointing, Reid closed his morning speech with an accusation usually reserved for the playground: “Republicans refuse to play the game unless we let them win.”

Original post is Senate Recess Over, Playground Still Busy 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 Mary Ann Chastain/AP Photo

Vice President Joe Biden at the South Carolina Democratic Party’s Jefferson Jackson Dinner May 3, 2013, in Columbia, SC. Photo by Mary Ann Chastain / AP

Republican Ted Cruz, as our friends at Politico point out this morning, will be roughly the same age as Democrat Joe Biden was when he launched his first campaign for president in 1987, should the freshman senator from Texas declare his intentions for his party’s 2016 nomination later this year.

And Cruz, 44, was peddling a newer brand of red meat last night in South Carolina’s Silver Elephant Dinner — talking about Chuck Norris wearing Jim DeMint pajamas — as Vice President Biden, 70, was preaching that old-time party religion at the annual late-night Columbia fish-fry hosted by Rep. Jim Clyburn, the last Democrat standing in South Carolina’s congressional delegation. (More on that below.)

Biden also was talking about voting rights before a largely African-American crowd at Clyburn’s fish-fry — evoking a story of a 106-year-old woman who had waited hours to vote last year. Cruz had spent the day touting gun-owners’ rights, appearing at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston with a cast of fellow 2016-minded Republicans (as Bloomberg’s Julie Bykowicz reports), before heading to South Carolina, one of the earliest-voting states in the presidential primary contests, to talk some more about guns.

“Vice President Biden is the quintessential ‘old school’ politician,” Jaime Harrison, who this weekend will become the South Carolina Democratic Party’s chairman, told Politico. “He is beloved by grassroots Democrats because he still kisses the babies and charms grandmas rather than simply rely on Twitter, Facebook, etc.”

Telling of how two South Carolina-born officers, William Travis and James Bonham, had tried to defend the Alamo, Cruz noted that President Barack Obama in Mexico this week spoke of American guns fueling violence across the border, and said:  `’I would suggest a place he could have started was not to have his Department of Justice selling guns to Mexican drug cartels.”

“Some people wear Superman pajamas. Well, Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas,” Cruz joked. “And Chuck Norris wears Jim DeMint pajamas.”

(Photo of Ted Cruz, right, by David J. Phillips / AP) 

Still, the one-term senator from Texas and longtime former senator and vice president from Delaware start out, should they run, as second-tier candidates in parties that have their eyes on other stars, Florida’s Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush on the Republican side, former first lady, secretary of state and New York senator Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side.

“Biden’s speech came as the state Democratic Party is at a turning point.,” Columbia’s The State newspaper reports this morning. “Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch has a chance of defeating former Republican Gov. Mark Sanford in Tuesday’s 1st District race, a key congressional district that a Democrat hasn’t won in more than 30 years. A Colbert Busch victory also could help state Sen. Vincent Sheheen’s chances in 2014 as he tries to unseat Republican Gov. Nikki Haley.

With 1,000 people on hand for a convention-hall state party dinner before Clyburn’s fish fry, the State quoted a political consultant, Lachlan McIntosh of Charleston, saying:  “It kind of reminds me of the Jefferson Jackson dinners we had when Sen. (Fritz) Hollings and Gov. (Jim) Hodges were here, helping sell tickets. Obviously, we haven’t had a governor or a U.S. senator in a while.”

In another sign of the old and the new in South Carolina, If Biden was harking to Hollings’ day — the 91-year-old retired senator came up from Charleston to see the vice president  (and Biden called him “the man I admire more than any man I’ve served with”) — Cruz was riding on the recently retired DeMint’s coat-tails. The freshly minted president of the Heritage Foundation was on hand at the fairgrounds and attempting to downplay the expectations surrounding Cruz’s possible candidacy.

“Give a guy a break,” DeMint said before the dinner, as The State reports today. “He’s just coming to speak to us here. Everybody who comes to South Carolina, you (the media) say is running for president.”

“Still, the Heritage Foundation boss said the name of one Republican politician, Cruz, energizes any room: “I have been to 25 cities in the last few months, and all I have to do is mention Ted Cruz’s name and people stand up and cheer. They’re hungry for someone who’s not afraid, willing to stand up to the status quo.”

Original post is Cruz, Biden: Early Eyes on Second-Tier Race, New Attacks, Old School by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

U.S. Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 1040 Individual Income Tax forms

They don’t call him a Tea Partier for nothing.

“I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the month of April begins with April Fool’s Day and then two weeks later Tax Day comes,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz says in a YouTube released today. “April Fool’s Day is the day when we all try to fool each other, and tax day is the day when the government tries to fool all of us into thinking we’re getting a bank for our buck.

“Instead, we know that billions and billions of dollars are wasted each and every year,” the first-year Republican senator says in his video. “We see the photos of extravagant White House parties.”

“That money would be much better spent investing in jobs, growth and new technologies in the private sector… And we’ve got to reform the tax code,” he says. “I think all of us should be able to mail in our taxes on a post card.”

Original post is Tax Day April Fool’s Plus Two Weeks: Cruz by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call

Members of Newtown, Ct. clergy set up more than 3,300 grave markers on the Mall during a 24-hour vigil to support the gun violence legislation.

What do Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Roger Wicker of Mississippi have in common?

The same thing that Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska have in common.

They bucked their parties today in allowing gun-control legislation to advance in the Senate.

The difference is that more Republicans sided with Ayotte and Wicker today in voting yes: 14 others.

No other Democrats sided with Pryor or Begich in voting no.

The vote, the first hard measure of congressional sentiment since the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, that claimed the lives of 20 first-grade children and six educators  on Dec. 14, was 68-31. The Senate needed at least 60 votes to advance the legislation to debate. The Democrats who rule the Senate, with 53 Democratic seats and two caucus-supporting independents, couldn’t have done this today without Republican support.

The proponents of legislation that is likely to center around a bipartisan agreement for more background checks for gun-buyers crafted by Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania drew support from Republicans such as John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina as well as Mark Kirk of Illinois, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Johnny Isakson of Georgia.

Democrats Pryor and Begich  probably had something else on their minds today: They both face re-election in 2014.

There is a large cast of Republicans who opposed this vote who also have elections on their minds as well, including three for whom the 2016 bell may be ringing: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a newcomer to Washington, already is making the rounds of Republican primary states for 2016. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, another prospect for the party’s 2016 presidential sweepstakes, also voted no. So did Kentucky’s Sen. Rand Paul, who has Iowa on his mind. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, focused on his 2014 re-election campaign, voted no as well — after initially threatening a filibuster fight.

In the end, it could serve the Democrats from Arkansas and Alaska who voted against this simple vote to advance a bill to debate with their voters back home.

It’s also possible that the Republicans with eyes on ’16 who voted no will be thanked for that in their party’s caucuses and primaries. Yet, it’s less certain how it may play among a general electorate, whom polls show supporting more thorough background checks for gun-buyers in the aftermath of one of the worst shootings in modern American history by a margin of 9-1.

Nine to one, sort of like 16-2 — 16 who also can read the polls.

Original post is Senate’s Gun-Control Rebels: 16-2 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) talks with a reporter outside the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill on March 22, 2013 in Washington, DC.

It’s never too early to book a dinner for the 2016 primary elections.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky already is lined up for the Iowa Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner on May 10.

And now comes word from the Palmetto State that Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas will headline the South Carolina Republican Party’s Silver Elephant Dinner on May 3.

And, oh, the South Carolina Democrats already had landed Vice President Joe Biden for their fundraising dinner the same night.

“Elected in November, Cruz already is being mentioned as a possible presidential candidate,” the Post and Courier of Charleston notes. “Cruz’s visit will mark his first visit to an early presidential primary or caucus state.”

“The Republican banquet, the party’s main annual fundraiser, will also feature a tribute to former U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, a Cruz endorser who resigned in December to head up the conservative Heritage Foundation.”

And as if South Carolina didn’t have enough going on this spring, former Gov. Mark Sanford appears on his way to rehabilitation from his “Appalachian Trail” adventure in a runoff today for his party’s nomination for an open House seat, as Bloomberg’s Greg Giroux reports.

Original post is Ted Cruz’s Silver Elephant Dinner: Debut Tour of 2016 Party Circuit by Political Capital.

Photograph by Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 24, 2013, to introduce legislation on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition feeding devices.

Ted Cruz, the first-year Republican senator from Texas who has taken on some senior lawmakers in rhetorical fisticuffs during his debut on Capitol Hill, ran into one contender today who showed little patience for his brashness.

Cruz put a question to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic senior senator from California and former mayor of San Francisco who witnessed bloodshed in her own tenure at City Hall and is pushing a ban on assault weapons and mega-sized ammunition clips in the aftermath of the shootings of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, with a Bushmaster.

“The right of the people” to keep and bear arms, Cruz said, is a term of art in the Second Amendment that is sounded in the First Amendment as well.

“The question that I would pose to the senior senator from California is, would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment,” Cruz said.

“Namely, would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights? Likewise, would she think that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against searches and seizures could properly apply only to the following specified individuals and not to the individuals that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?”

“I’m not a sixth grader,” Feinstein replied. “Senator, I’ve been on this committee for 20 years. I was a mayor for nine years. I walked in, I saw people shot. I’ve looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. I’ve seen the bullets that implode. In Sandy Hook, youngsters were dismembered.”

“Look, there are other weapons” that people can purchase, she said. “I’m not a lawyer, but after 20 years I’ve been up close and personal to the Constitution. I have great respect for it. This doesn’t mean that weapons of war and the (Supreme Court’s) Heller decision clearly points out three exceptions, two of which are pertinent here.”

“And so I — you know, it’s fine you want to lecture me on the Constitution,” she said. “I appreciate it. Just know I’ve been here for a long time. I’ve passed on a number of bills. I’ve studied the Constitution myself. I am reasonably well educated, and I thank you for the lecture.”

The bill, she said, specifies more than 100 banned weapons — yet it exempts more than 2,000 weapons.

“Isn’t that enough for the people of the United States?” she asked. “Do they need a bazooka?.. I come from a different place than you do.”

“I would note she chose not to answer my question,” Cruz said, pressing his luck.

“The answer is obvious — no.” Feinstein said.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee joined in, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, pointing out to Cruz that, in his home state of Texas, the state Board of Education “tells people which books they can and cannot read.”

The ban on assault weapons and clips with more than 10 rounds of ammo passed the committee by a vote of 10-8 along party lines, only Democrats backing it.

President Barack Obama congratulated the committee:  “ These weapons of war, when combined with high-capacity magazines, have one purpose: to inflict maximum damage as quickly as possible.  They are designed for the battlefield, and they have no place on our streets, in our schools, or threatening our law enforcement officers. ”

The ban is likely to die in the full Senate.

Original post is Cruzing for a Lecture: Feinstein on Guns by Political Capital.