Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n
* Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney seems to have annoyed an important GOP constituency: Cubans in Miami<\/a>. Romney inadvertently associated a notorious Fidel Castro-spewed Communist catch phrase with freedom fighters, describing the socialist saying “Patria o muerte, venceremos” as “inspiring,” and claiming the phrase was swiped from liberty-seeking Cubans by leftist admirers of Castro. Better yet, Romney then tried to cover up his mistake<\/a>, editing an online transcript and removing the video from his site.<\/p>\n * Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), in a bit of a surprise, announced yesterday that he plans to seek a sixth term<\/a> in 2010. “There are a lot of important things to be done and finally after being here to acquire some seniority, I’m in a position to do that,” Specter said. “I’m full of energy and my wife doesn’t want me home for breakfast, lunch and dinner.” Specter, who has had health problems, will be 80 in 2010. (thanks to K.M. for the tip)<\/p>\n * Sen. Joe Lieberman (I) told MSNBC’s Nora O’Donnell yesterday that he’s still undecided<\/a> on caucusing with the GOP. “I wouldn’t rule out,” Lieberman told O’Donnell, adding that “my real hope here is to stay and fight for the kind of Democratic Party I joined when John F. Kennedy was president.” He also says that he could support a Republican pro-war presidential candidate.<\/p>\n * If you haven’t seen it, the political world is surprisingly abuzz with speculation and analysis about the “Big Sister” ad<\/a>, which incorporates Hillary Clinton into Apple Computers’ famous 1984 dystopian commercial. I’m not quite sure what it’s causing such a stir, but Barack Obama, who appears to have the backing of the anonymous creators of the web video, has said his campaign has nothing to do with it<\/a>.<\/p>\n * And former Bush HHS Secretary and former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) will reportedly appear on CNN tomorrow to unofficially announce<\/a> that he’s going to run for president. Thompson has practically moved to Iowa<\/a> to help improve his chances, which at this point, remain remote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney seems to have annoyed an important GOP constituency: Cubans in Miami. Romney inadvertently associated a notorious Fidel Castro-spewed Communist catch phrase with freedom fighters, describing the socialist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}