It’s five o’clock somewhere! Here’s what’s crackling in politics:
Rubio and Cruz beef continues to build
The rival Republican camps of Florida senator Marco Rubio and Texas senator Ted Cruz threw jabs Wednesday after the candidates clashed at Tuesday’s debate over immigration and national security. The conservative blogosphere burbled with signs of resentment that Cruz was attacking Rubio while laying off Trump.
Candidates flee Vegas... except Carson
Speaking of Trump, he popped up in his airplane in Mesa, Arizona, for what looked like a sizable rally. Cruz flew to Los Angeles while Rubio hit Iowa and then New Hampshire. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, though, stayed for a rally in Las Vegas, where he predicted he would be a one-term president, at most.
Congress announces deal on taxes and spending
Early Wednesday morning, House speaker Paul Ryan announced that leaders of both chambers had reached a bipartisan agreement on a tax ($650bn)-and-spending ($1.1tn) package that Congress is likely to pass later in the week. Apparently even the Freedom Caucus bought it.
Quote of the day
They are all saying that fear stuff and trying to use it for their own benefit. But I’m not as fearful as them.” – an Iowa Republican voter to Ben Jacobs, on the candidates
To-go cup
Trump in Mesa:
#2016 pic.twitter.com/mx93juV0Lz
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) December 16, 2015
Rubio-Cruz continues:
Rubio camp on warpath.... https://t.co/b3hfX4PEQX
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) December 16, 2015
How embarrassed does Trump look to be holding a copy of Playboy with himself on the cover?
#2016 pic.twitter.com/mx93juV0Lz
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) December 16, 2015
In which Benjy Sarlin at MSNBC helpfully explains what that Cruz-Rubio immigration fight last night was all about. “Like a lot of arguments involving two senators, the fight rests on a complicated argument over policy, procedure, and tactics,” Sarlin writes.
The two argued about where they stand now on handling the estimated 11m undocumented migrants in the United States, where they stand now on the question of admitting more immigrants legally, and where they stood in 2013, when a group of senators including Rubio led the passage of an immigration reform bill.
Here’s Sarlin on a shift in Cruz’s position on what to do with undocumented immigrants:
But on illegal immigration, things get more complex. Cruz has spent months and months and monthsducking questions as to what he would eventually do with undocumented immigrants, usually saying it’s a “conversation” for another time once the border is secure. Read this exchange with Chuck Todd onMeet The Press from July. It’s almost painful how much Cruz does not want to address this topic.
That changed on Tuesday, though, when Rubio challenged Cruz to say whether he favors legal status or not. For the first time, Cruz appeared to shift decisively against it.
“I have never supported legalization, and I do not intend to support legalization,” Cruz said.
Rubio’s camp pointed to the phrase “intend” as an obvious weasel word...
There’s much more where that came from. Read the full thing here.
(h/t: @bencjacobs)
At his Las Vegas event, Ben Carson has speculated that his presidency, should it materialize, might only last for one term, because of the unpopular though salubrious choices he would have to work, Dave Weigel of the Washington Post reports:
“If I’m successful in this endeavor to become president of the United States, it’s very likely I would be a one-term president,” Carson said. “There are some tough things that need to be done.”
Read the full piece, including Carson’s expanding on a Muslim Brotherhood infiltration conspiracy theory he alluded to in the debate, here.
Less than 12 hours after the end of the last Republican debate of 2015, Marco Rubio was back on the campaign trail in a hotel ballroom in Ankeny, Iowa, reports Ben Jacobs:
Rubio, who has devoted a disproportionate amount of time to campaigning in this prosperous suburb, gave a relatively short, breezy version of his stump speech where he seamlessly incorporated his opening statement from last night’s debate and then spent just as long working the rope line, taking selfies and shaking hands with the crowd of about 100 who filled the room.
[...]
But not everyone in the crowd shared Rubio’s foreign policy approach. Dennis Dietz of Polk City, a registered Democrat, told the Guardian: “I switched out of the Republican party because of this kind of fear-mongering.” A self-described “Bob Dole kind of person”, Dietz was disappointed with Rubio’s hawkish rhetoric. “They are all saying that fear stuff and trying to use it for their own benefit. But I’m not as fearful as them.”
Read the full piece here.
Rubio in Iowa, all smiles at the day’s headlines.
— Matt Mackowiak (@MattMackowiak) December 16, 2015
Hillary Clinton is in Omaha, Nebraska, today.
Nebraska’s a solidly Republican state but one of two states, with Maine, to divide the electoral votes it awards by congressional district. Omaha’s in district 2, which Barack Obama picked off in 2008, despite a strong statewide performance by Republican nominee John McCain.
Look who showed up with Clinton: Warren Buffett, the world’s third-richest person.
Fed hikes interest rates 1/4 point
Our live blog coverage is here.
Meanwhile, at a Ben Carson rally in Las Vegas:
Ben Carson is now warning about "exploding a nuclear device in the exo-atmosphere."
— Reid J. Epstein (@reidepstein) December 16, 2015
And Trump’s in Arizona:
Big crowd for Donald Trump on a bitterly cold day in Mesa, AZ: pic.twitter.com/Fd0CAjBuhV
— Jenna Johnson (@wpjenna) December 16, 2015
[Google thinks it’s 52 in Mesa]
Updated
About that tax deal
As the debate unfolded in Las Vegas, House speaker Paul Ryan went to work to sell a bipartisan tax-and-spending deal to his caucus, ultimately issuing a statement of a sealed deal after midnight.
The House plans to pass the package as two separate bills, to be rolled together for the Senate to pass, likely later this week. Congress was expected pass yet another piece of legislation to avert the risk of a government shutdown before the new package is in place.
Ryan said the spending bill puts a two-year moratorium on a tax on medical devices and postpones the “Cadillac tax” on costly health care plans. Additionally, the agreement extends valuable tax reflief to lumber companies, racetrack owners, apple growers, cider makers and others, according to the New York Times.
The tax breaks are worth about $650bn and the spending bill weighs in at $1.1tn, according to the Washington Post.
“I’m not real happy with the omnibus,” Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline, a Republican of Minnesota, told Roll Call.
But if you’re going to move forward and follow Speaker Ryan’s notion that we’re going to move on the offense this year and go back to regular order and pass all the appropriations bills then I think many of my colleagues will look at it like I do, that we need to move past this, get this done. Let’s put 2015 behind us and get onto 2016.”
TrusTed get it
#CruzCrew: Join us in Las Vegas (https://t.co/AZcjXAOpgq) and St. Paul (https://t.co/hemqrN1OUN) tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/eJchmGjBRT
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 16, 2015
Even after the final debate of the year, Republicans in the key early voting state of Iowa haven’t yet settled on a candidate, reports Ben Jacobs from interviews conducted last night in Waukee, Iowa:
On a gloomy Tuesday night, about two dozen Republican stalwarts, many of whom were campaign staffers, came out to an Irish bar in a suburban Des Moines strip mall to watch the debate and assess the candidates.
After the debate, four caucus-goers who represented a fair cross section of establishment Republican sentiment offered mixed reviews of the moderators and the candidates.
Shane Blanchard, a member of the city council in Waukee, said: “I think CNN did a good job,” although he expressed some concerns about the lengthy back-and-forth exchanges between candidates like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. “I think, you know, when they get going back and forth like that and it goes for so long it does a disservice to the debate,” he added. Rod Shirk of West Des Moines shared these concerns: “I’d like to see more cohesiveness instead of divisiveness.”
Read the full piece here.
Updated
The Bush team cuts a web video around the candidate’s attack lines last night on Trump:
Annoyed into responding by Bush’s badgering, Trump last night snapped: “I’m at 42 and you’re at three!” A factcheck shows us that while the recent Monmouth University poll had Trump at 41% support among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters and Bush at 3%, the national polling averages have Trump closer to 33 and Bush clear up at 4.
While former Florida governor Jeb Bush spent Tuesday evening attacking Trump, Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, noticably laid off the polling frontrunner.
Christie continued to pull his punches this morning. Not good primary politics to attack the Donald, it appears he’s decided. Or maybe this is simply the way he feels.
Christie: Trump "sounded like a serious candidate to me. ... Maybe Jeb and I were listening to different things." https://t.co/C0WAkWvlUL
— Brett LoGiurato (@BrettLoGiurato) December 16, 2015
Updated
If you missed last night’s proceedings, you can experience them as if in real time here, on our live blog:
The Republican debate on Tuesday in Las Vegas was so long ago that Marco Rubio has already stopped in Iowa en route to New Hampshire, Ted Cruz is already under Senate investigation and a central conjecture of the candidates’ discussion on national security appears to have folded.
Never fear – we’ll catch you up and run along the campaign trail so you don’t have to. Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs was with Rubio in Ankeny, Iowa...
Rubio pledges to an Iowa voter on rope line: "we are going to be here a bunch now. Like, literally, every three days."
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) December 16, 2015
... while Sabrina Siddiqui and Paul Lewis in Las Vegas have delivered a comprehensive analysis of last night’s proceedings, for those still catching up:
(There’s this, too, from columnist Jeb Lund on the Strip.)
As for Cruz, Senate intelligence chair Richard Burr says his staff is looking into the possibility that the candidate aired classified info in his discussion onstage last night of how the USA Freedom Act changed the NSA’s ability to search phone numbers.
Burr didn’t watch the debate, though, with more urgent programming to see:
Sen Burr said he did not actually see the exchange in question with Cruz last night. "The Voice was on, it was the final episode," he said.
— Erica Werner (@ericawerner) December 16, 2015
UPDATE:
Responding to Burr, Cruz spox @catblackfrazier cites several news articles containing figures Cruz used, and related congressional testimony
— Erica Werner (@ericawerner) December 16, 2015
Reuters reports that the suspects in the San Bernardino terror attacks did not describe their intentions to commit terrorist acts on social media, as has been widely reported and as discussed extensively last night be the candidates. The “fact” that the department of homeland security “failed” to search the suspects’ social media accounts, many Republican candidates said, pointed to alarming flaws in the country’s procedures for screening immigrants, and to a basic incompetence at the core of the Obama administration.
Except it appears there were no social media posts. (CNN is reporting elsewhere, however, that the FBI has concluded the suspects exchanged direct messages in 2013 stating their intentions.)
BREAKING: San Bernardino shooters did not post support for jihad on social media: FBI
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) December 16, 2015
What else? Rand Paul was on a roll last night:
Spotted after #GOPDebate: @RandPaul, wife, & team at craps table #Vegas pic.twitter.com/54wc0UgqSj
— Noah Gray CNN (@NoahGrayCNN) December 16, 2015
And this mashup is not representative of anything that actually happened onstage in Las Vegas and yet is mildly amusing.
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) December 16, 2015
Updated
