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
* ABC News reported<\/a> last night that Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, donated $150 to Planned Parenthood in 1994. “Her positions are not terribly relevant to my campaign,” Romney said in response in Iowa last night. Romney’s rivals, as one might imagine, are arguing the opposite.<\/p>\n * Rudy Giuliani criticized congressional Republicans<\/a> during a speech in Alabama yesterday, saying they failed to keep federal spending under control. “We need a President who knows how to cut spending,” Giuliani said. “I am an expert at it.” He neglected to mention that New York City’s budget swelled by nearly 28% during his two terms as mayor.<\/p>\n * Speaking of Giuliani, the former NYC mayor apparently asked for and received four New York Yankees World Series rings — one for each title during his tenure — each engraved with his name. Giuliani paid $16,000 for the rings, which are valued at over $200,000<\/a>. It’s illegal for the mayor to accept lucrative gifts from those who do business with the city — and the Yankees did a lot of business with NYC.<\/p>\n * Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson acknowledges that his big speech in California last weekend was a bust, but he’s shaping a new “Stump Speech 2.0<\/a>” for Saturday night, when Thompson delivers the keynote address to the secretive right-wing Council for National Policy.<\/p>\n * Rep. Martin Meehan (D-Mass.) resigned<\/a> from Congress yesterday in order to become the new chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Gov. Deval Patrick has set a Sept. 4 primary and an Oct. 16 general election to replace him.<\/p>\n * Al Gore’s friends and former aides don’t expect the VP to run<\/a> again in 2008.<\/p>\n * And the political world is abuzz with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s new TV ads<\/a>, which show him struggling at a mock job interview. Fans of the ads think they’re effective because they’re funny and emphasize Richardson’s terrific resume. Critics of the ads think they fail to make Richardson look presidential, and neglect to talk about the issues. Take a look<\/a> and see for yourself. (For what it’s worth, I think they’re great for an early bio ad, but he’ll need to follow up with something more substantive soon.)<\/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: * ABC News reported last night that Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, donated $150 to Planned Parenthood in 1994. “Her positions are not terribly relevant to my campaign,” Romney said in response in Iowa […]<\/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-10757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10757","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=10757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}