Photograph by Michael Dwyer/AP Photo

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., center, campaigns with Massachusetts Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Gabriel Gomez, left, at the Boston Police VFW Post in Boston, on May 20, 2013.

Not typically a hot election topic in Massachusetts, term limits became the subject of the most heated exchange last night in the third and final U.S. Senate debate between Democrat Ed Markey and Republican Gabriel Gomez.

The back-and-forth offered a rare view of Markey off his taking points and occurred in a section of the debate when the candidates asked each other questions.

Gomez, 47, hammering a campaign theme that his opponent has been in Congress to for too long, asked if Markey would support term limits.

“You’ve been down there for 37 years,” said Gomez, rounding up Markey’s 36-year and seven-month tenure in the House. “The president has term limits. Don’t you believe that senators and congressmen should have term limits?”

Markey, 66, saw an opportunity.

“You just had John McCain in campaigning for you three weeks ago,” Markey said. “Did you ask John McCain to leave the Senate? No you did not.”

Gomez: “Yes I did, sir.”

Markey: “No you did not. You did not tell John McCain that you don’t think he belongs in the Senate anymore as you were praising him at that press conference. That just did not happen.”

Gomez: “Just to be frank. I did tell Senator John McCain that he should be term limited.”

Gomez went on to talk about differences he has with the Republican Party including positions on same-sex marriage, immigration reform and background check on weapons, seemingly ending the discussion.

Markey didn’t let the term-limit question go, and circled back to Gomez’s conversation with McCain.

“Mr. Gomez did not tell John McCain, ‘This should be your last term. You should be leaving right now,’” Markey said. “That never happened. That conversation did not happen. I think everyone knows he did not tell McCain, ‘Right now he should be finishing his career.’”

At this point, debate moderator RD Sahl tried to settle the matter.

Turning to Markey, he said: “Are you calling him a liar?”

“I’m saying that did not happen,” Markey said.

Sahl addressed Gomez: “Very quickly, did that conversation happen?”

“It absolutely did happen,” Gomez said. “If you want to call me a liar that is fine Mr. Markey.”

McCain, the Arizona Republican first elected to the Senate in January 1987 and nominee for president in 2008, seemingly settled the issue with a tweet he posted at 9:04 pm:

Of course I discussed issue of term limits w/ @GomezforMA when campaigning in #MASen- we disagree on that issue but agree on many others

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) June 19, 2013

Original post is Markey-Gomez Debate: McCain Tweets in on Term Limits by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chris Miller/AP Photo

Alaska Republican Governor, Sarah Palin, center, greets 7-month old Nora Frame and her mother Ruth, right, of Pelican, Alaska, during the inaugural annual Christmas open house at the Governor’s Mansion, in Juneau, Alaska, in this 2007 file photo.

The Fourth of July may still be a couple of weeks away, but apparently it’s never too early to focus on Christmas — or, at the least, plumb it for political points.

Sarah Palin, kicking off Act Two of her Fox News career, touted for viewers yesterday her latest literary offering.

“Writing a book — a book about Christmas and pushing back on the politically correct who would like to take ‘Christ’ out of Christmas,” she said on “Fox & Friends” in giving an update on what she’s been up to since she vanished from the network’s airwaves in January.

In her inimitable (unless you’re Tina Fey) rhetorical style, she described her effort as “a kind of a legalese how to push back and protect the heart of Christmas.” She quickly made clear, though, that she’s not penning a tome: “At the same time, a very festive and happy and jolly book about tradition and recipes and fun things about Christmas.”

In terms of setting holiday policy, though, we can’t help but think that Palin has been one-upped by Rick Perry.

Like Palin — John McCain’s surprise running mate in the Arizona senator’s failed 2008 presidential bid — Perry’s national aspirations ended up for naught when his bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nod spectacularly flamed out (what were those 3 Cabinet departments he was going to eliminate?).

But unlike Palin, who after returning to Alaska decided to resign as governor well before her four-year term was ending, Perry kept his day job — the Texas governorship he’s now held since December 2000. And in that post, at a ceremony last week that included a gaggle of Santa Claus impersonators, he signed into law legislation dubbed the “Merry Christmas” bill.

As reported by the Associated Press, the measure “removes legal risks of saying `Merry Christmas’ in schools while also protecting traditional holiday symbols, such as a menorah or nativity scene, as long as more than one religion and a secular symbol are also reflected.”

Perry took note of the seasonal disconnect, saying, “I realize it’s only June. But it’s a good June and the holidays are coming early this year.”

He added: “It’s a shame that a bill like this one I’m signing today is even required, but I’m glad that we’re standing up for religious freedom in this state. Religious freedom does not mean freedom from religion.”

Can an interview with Palin on the ever-lurking Scrooge threat be far behind?

Original post is Palin, Perry Stand Firm Behind Christmas by Political Capital.

Ultimately, the FEC could not decide whether the group, American Issues Project, violated the law by failing to register and report as a political committee.

FEC staff lawyers said in a report that AIP appeared to have broken the law, and they recommended the agency pursue an enforcement case.  Yet Republican and Democratic commissioners deadlocked along party lines in a vote on staff recommendations, meaning the case was dismissed without a definitive legal ruling, according to FEC documents.

AIP funder Harold Simmons, a major Republican donor, was let off the hook by the only clear ruling in the case. The FEC commissioners voted to find Simmons did not violate PAC contribution limits because such limits are no longer valid, due to court decisions in the intervening years since the 2008 election.

However, the FEC deadlock on the main issue in the case—when a political group becomes a PAC—leaves unanswered a key legal question that has lingered and grown through the 2012 campaign and up to the present day.

With the FEC unable to rule on which organizations must follow campaign finance rules, including disclosure of their funding sources, the IRS has been asked more and more to determine which new organizations conducting political activities are eligible for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(4)—the part of the tax code governing “social welfare” organizations.

Such organizations have an advantage over FEC-registered PACs because, under the tax law, they can keep their funding sources secret. The groups operate as nonprofit corporations and are becoming increasingly active in campaigns following the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which said corporations can make unlimited independent expenditures to influence campaigns.

The FEC has three Republican commissioners—Caroline Hunter, Donald McGahn, and Matthew Petersen. There are two FEC Democrats—Steven Walther and Ellen Weintraub—with one Democratic seat vacant. The votes of at least four commissioners on the six-member panel are required for any final ruling. Consensus has been lacking at the FEC in recent years, however, with the commissioners splitting along party and ideological lines on many key issues.

That is what happened in the case of the American Issues Project. The group faded from public view after Obama was elected president in 2008, but it made headlines in the summer months of that year by spending $3 million on ads linking Obama to Ayres and the Weather Underground, the 1960s radical group that was described as a `terrorist organization.”  The ads asked if voters “know enough” about Obama to elect him.

Obama’s campaign said the ads distorted the facts to smear Obama and help defeat him in the presidential race. The campaign called loudly in 2008 for the Justice Department to investigate AIP’s alleged criminal violations of campaign finance laws in sponsoring the messages without registering as a PAC.

The group claimed that it was operating legally, though it took a lower profile after the public flap with the Obama campaign.

All of AIP’s money for the anti-Obama ads came from Simmons, who has continued to fund similar organizations up through the last election. The Dallas businessman and his wife provided nearly $27 million to Republican-leaning organizations in the 2012 campaign, according to FEC reports compiled by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics.

A staff report from the FEC general counsel’s office concluded that AIP should have registered as a PAC and followed stricter reporting requirements. The counsel’s report suggested that the agency pursue an enforcement case and perhaps seek a fine in the case.

Original post is Obama vs. Simmons: FEC Deadlock by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference, June 14, 2013 in Washington, DC.

It’s about winning, Jeb Bush says.

David Brody, of “The Brody File” at the Christian Broadcasting Network, may have heard what we heard at last week’s Faith and Freedom Coalition: a Jeb Bush speaking a different line from Ralph Reed’s.

Brody sat down with Bush for an interview Friday — airing on “The 700 Club” today — in which the host asked about the state of the Republican Party: “Where do you see evangelicals’ role in all of this? Because really, there is somewhat of a fight for the soul of the Republican Party. Many evangelicals feel the culture is not where it needs to be and it’s going down pretty quickly.”

And Bush replied: “I think we could focus on all our disparate parts, all of the points of disagreement that conservatives have and never win again. My general thought is that the focus ought to be on how you get fifty plus one. Not how you win amongst forty-five. ”

“And that’s kind of where we are where everybody has a view that’s slightly different than one another and certainly social conservatives are a huge part of a winning coalition which means that we have to change our language to be inclusive but not abandon principle and that’s not as hard, I think, as people make it out to be.”

Original post is Jeb Bush: ‘Fifty Plus One’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A protester holds a sign reading, ‘Rubio: Don’t Oppose Family Unity’, as she joins with others in front of Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) office on May 22, 2013 in Doral, Florida.

There’s a lot of death talk surrounding immigration reform.

Will the bill itself, hailed as the magical medicine for the revival of the Republican Party, die in the Republican-run House?

Will passage of the bill kill the chances of any Republican associated with it in the party’s 2016 presidential primaries?

Marco Rubio is the one Republican who stands perhaps the most to win, or lose, from the immigration bill he co-authored.

“Dead to me,” conservative radio talk show host Steve Deace says of Rubio’s standing among Republicans in Iowa.

It doesn’t matter who the party runs in 2016, says Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican working with Rubio and the other six members of the bipartisan Gang of Eight on immigration. If the party doesn’t get it right on immigration this year, he says, it can forget 2016.

“I would suggest a guy like Jeb Bush would have a really good chance in 2016,” Graham said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday.

Bush is co-author of a book, “Immigration Wars,” which takes a middle ground approach toward reform: “We propose a path to permanent legal resident status for those who entered our country illegally as adults and who have committed no additional crimes of significance,” he and co-author Clint Bolick write. “Permanent residency in this context, however, should not lead to citizenship.” Yet, Bush too, has said he can live with citizenship if that’s the consensus.

Nothing short of that path to citizenship will satisfy the Democrats in the Senate, where leaders hope to amass 70 votes for their bill before July 4 to increase pressure on the House for action. Citizenship, it’s been clear all along, could kill it in the House.

So in strengthening the bill as it moves through the Senate, Rubio is attempting to keep the focus on border security.

“The vast majority of Americans, the vast majority of conservative Republicans are prepared to support immigration reform, but only if we can ensure that we’re not going to have another wave of illegal immigration in the future,” Rubio said on ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday. “And so I think they have pointed to valid criticisms of how the border security plan is structured in the bill, and quite frankly very reasonable ways to address it.”

Consider either Bush or Rubio among the party’s best prospects down the road, neither at this point committed to a national campaign.

Consider immigration reform critical to their party’s future, in that life and death spiral.

“If we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016,” Graham said on “Meet the Press. “We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party, and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who will run, in my view.”

It’s not only Hispanic voters with whom the Republican Party must reengage — having lost 71 percent of the vote to President Barack Obama last year. It’s also Asian-American voters, who voted in even greater numbers for Obama – the real “canary in the coal mine,” Bush says.

Yet consider immigration, still, a problem within the party that forced Mitt Romney to stake a position untenable in November.

“If I know anything about the Iowa caucuses, it’s that Marco Rubio shouldn’t even bother showing up in 2016,” Deace writes in a Politico commentary today. “Sure, if you ask state party officials and some other big names, they’ll say all the politically correct things about Rubio’s chances publicly to preserve the process, plus Iowans are nice. But privately I’ve heard “Rubio is dead to me” from plenty of conservatives.”

Original post is Republican ‘Death Spiral:’ Life-and-Breathless Immigration Debate by Political Capital.

Photograph by Pete Marovich/Getty Images

Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska, waves at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) March 16, 2013 in National Harbor, Maryland.

As others already have noted about Sarah Palin’s departure from Fox News, the network said at the time: “We have thoroughly enjoyed our association with Governor Palin. We wish her the best in her future endeavors.”

The future is here.

At Fox, which says: “Palin will appear on FOX News Channel’s (FNC) daytime and primetime programming, starting with FOX & Friends on Monday, June 17^th. She will also contribute to FOX Business Network (FBN).”

Chairman Roger Ailes explains: “I have great confidence in her and am pleased that she will once again add her commentary to our programming. I hope she continues to speak her mind.”

In tune with Rand Paul on the NSA spying, she is:

Clapper lied. Government spied. gu.com/p/3ggm5/tw

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) June 13, 2013

Palin already has served longer as a Fox News contributor than she did as governor of Alaska.

“From January 2010 to January 2013, she served as a contributor for FNC,” the network statement notes. “In 2010, Palin was named to Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” list.”

She also ran for vice president. That’s down the resume.

Original post is Sarah Palin: Back to the Future by Political Capital.

Photograph by Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images

The National Rifle Association (NRA) Annual Convention on May 4, 2013 in Houston, Texas.

The National Rifle Association is out with a new television ad criticizing West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin for “working with” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama to push for stricter gun controls.

“Concerned? You should be,” a narrator in the 30-second ad running in the senator’s home state says. “Tell Senator Manchin to honor his commitment to the Second Amendment and reject the Obama-Bloomberg gun control agenda.”

Manchin, a Democratic gun enthusiast who until now had a A rating from the gun rights lobbying group, helped write a compromise measure that would have expanded background checks to cover firearms purchased at gun shows and online.

In addition to the TV ad about Manchin, the NRA has a new radio ad in Arkansas defending Senator Mark Pryor, according to the Associated Press. Pryor is one of four Democrats who voted against the background check bill. The ad urges voters to thank Pryor for supporting gun rights and for not listening to the mayor of New York City, the AP reported.

Manchin worked with Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, on the background checks measure. Yesterday in Washington, Manchin met with families of the 20 children shot to death last December at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut — a crime that touched off the current gun debate.

The Manchin-Toomey amendment failed on April 17.

Since then, the New York mayor has been calling out senators — Democrats and Republicans alike — for voting against expanded background checks, a proposal that polls show a majority of Americans support. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a nonprofit organization that Mayor Bloomberg co-founded and funds, has aired ads chastising Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona for voting against The Manchin-Toomey plan.

The NRA has been running ads in New Hampshire thanking Ayotte for her support of gun rights.

Yesterday, Bloomberg mailed a letter to more than 1,000 New York City donors asking them to withhold campaign contributions to Pryor and the other three Democratic senators who voted against the measure. It was another sign of the mayor’s growing interest in national politics, particularly when it comes to guns. He has spent at least $28 million of his personal fortune in the past year on campaign contributions and issues ads.

The mayor, 71 and a political independent, is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

Original post is NRA Targets Manchin, A-Rated Once, Gun Debate Grows Personal by Political Capital.

Photograph by Theo Wargo/Getty Images

Jimmy Fallon and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie during a taping of ‘Late Night With Jimmy Fallon’ at Rockefeller Center on June 12, 2013 in New York City.

What can you say about an overweight governor who allows a late-night comedian to suggest that he step away from the scale?

You can say what Chris Christie said: Jimmy Fallon’s not as funny as he thinks.

That’s New Jersey’s “Love-Guv.”

The  popular Republican, seeking reelection, is “about to give New Jersey a huge election,” Fallon said of the October special Senate election that Christie has scheduled in October.

Fallon had a lot of fun last night with the girth of the ”Christie cream donut,”

Christie has thrown his “full weight” behind his costly decision about the special election, Christie said.

“That’s too easy,” Fallon said. “It isn’t even funny.”

“Isn’t that what your audience says every night?” Christie replied?

“Ouch,” said Fallon. Yeah, that’s right, said Christie, it hurts, “so step off, brother.”

Fallon: ”Isn’t that what your bathroom scale says every night?”

And this morning, Christie was Tweeting to tell about it:

Had a lot of fun with .@jimmyfallon last night bit.ly/11xW46O #slowjamthenews

— Governor Christie (@GovChristie) June 13, 2013

Original post is Christie-Fallon Slow-Jamming News by Political Capital.

Photograph by Philippe Lopez/AFP via Getty Images

An edition of the South China Morning Post carrying the story of Edward Snowden on its front page in Hong Kong on June 13, 2013.

Edward Snowden has a lot of public support, it appears, for his leaking of once-secret information about government surveillance of domestic telephone records and international Internet traffic.

Yet not a lot of sympathy.

Fifty-four percent of those surveyed by Time magazine say Snowden, a former security contractor for the National Security Agency and ex-CIA technician, did a “good thing” in handing NSA documents to the Washington Post and the U.K.’s Guardian newspapers.

Still, 53 percent say he should be prosecuted for the leaks.

Public opinion also is divided on the question of the surveillance programs themselves: 48 percent of those surveyed by Time approve, and 44 percent disapprove, a statistical tie in a poll with a 4 percentage point margin of error.

Most doubt the revelations will force the government to curtail the program, while 76 percent say they expect additional disclosures that the spying programs are bigger and more widespread than now known.

General Keith Alexander, the NSA director, has told Congress this week that the revelations will compromise the program — alerting targets to methodology that can be evaded with the disclosures.

His predecessor, Michael Hayden, who also ran the CIA, suggests that media coverage of the surveillance leak has “conflated” the work of the telephone screening with that of the Internet watching.

The orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act demanding phone records — such as the one demanding Verizon records over a three-month period revealed by Snowden — have collected the full run of records of calls made and their duration, Hayden notes.

The “PRISM” program involving the Internet has been targeted, aimed at foreign communications, Hayden said in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today. That means that the government has ordered up the email or chats of someone in Yemen communicating with someone in another foreign country. The only thing American about this traffic, he said, is that it passed through a server in Redmond, Washington.

Microsoft and other companies involved in the program have responded to specific and limited requests from the government, Hayden said — which corroborates what companies such as Google and Facebook have been saying, that the government does not have “direct” or “unfettered” access to their servers or their users email.

Finally, Hayden says, the program that President Barack Obama is running is basically former President George W. Bush’s program, with some expansions — Obama too has said publicly that while “scrubbing” the program he inherited, he also has broadened it.

All the significant reforms in the program, ensuring that secret FISA courts are monitoring the work, following revelations of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping in his Terrorism Surveillance Program were made in 2006, Hayden said, with restraints in telephone surveillance, and in 2008, with amendments to the FISA Act. Obama, he said, has widened the circle of members of Congress who are periodically briefed on it.

Which is interesting in light of the Time survey of 805 people conducted June 10-11, the two days following Snowden’s announcement that he was the source of the newspaper reports. Forty two percent of those surveyed said they see little difference between Obama’s care in respecting the privacy of Americans and Bush’s care — while 28 percent said Bush was more careful, and 25 percent said Obama has been.

Original post is NSA Leaks: Support, Little Sympathy for the Leaker by Political Capital.

Photograph by David Becker/Zuma Press

A supporter during ”Rally For America” where several thousand people from several states gathered in downtown Las Vegas to show their support for immigration reform in the United States. Several dozen speakers including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lent their support.

So the Senate, at last, is ready to take up a bipartisan immigration bill, the result of months of negotiations among eight senators of both parties — including most notably Republican Marco Rubio of Florida and Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York, a product approved by Sen. Patrick Leahy’s Judiciary Committee.

And who’s on Spanish-language TV this weekend talking about “my plans to pass comprehensive immigration?”

I’ll be on with Univision’s @alpunto and Telemundo’s @jdbalart this Sunday to discuss my plans to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) June 7, 2013

That’s right, the Nevadan whose political health depends on support in the Latino community, will be explaining his plans — Senate approval by July 4, Independence Day — to newsman Jose Diaz-Balart, brother of one of the members of a bipartisan group negotiating immigration in the house, Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami.

at “Al Punto,” Host Jorge Ramos is the Walter Cronkite of Spanish-language TV.

And Reid? He’s the guy taking the most significant immigration legislation in a generation to the floor. What happens next is in the hands of fellow Democrats fighting off amendments on gay rights, guns and labor and Republicans intent on making the bill stronger on border security to prepare it for the next ride, in the House.

Original post is Harry Reid: ‘My’ Immigration Plans by Political Capital.