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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: simplicity who wrote (724256)	7/3/2013 4:08:13 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1576816

White House Memo Shows Obama Administration’s Painful Efforts To Defend Valerie Jarrett ....................................................................................................................................... “Valerie is someone here who other people inside the building know they can trust. (need examples.)” As reported in the forthcoming book This Town. July 3, 2013 by Andrew Kaczynski buzzfeed.com A soon-to-be-released book by Mark Leibovich reveals in excruciating detail the White House’s efforts to defend longtime Obama friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett in the run-up to a New York Times profile that ran in September 2012. *Leibovich, himself a reporter for the New York Times,* got ahold of a White House memo titled “The Magic of Valerie” that included 33 talking points circulated throughout the administration. Here are the talking points excerpted in Leibovich’s forthcoming book, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital: The magic of Valerie is her intellect and her heart. She is an incredibly kind, caring and thoughtful person with a unique ability to pinpoint the voiceless and shine a light on them and the issues they and the President care about with the ultimate goal of making a difference in people’s lives. Valerie is the perfect combination of smart, savvy and innovative. Valerie has an enormous capacity for both empathy and sympathy. She balances the need to be patient and judicious with the desire to get things done and work as hard as possible for the American people from the White House. To know what both drives Valerie Jarrett and why the President values her opinion so much, you benefit greatly from really getting to know the woman. Valerie is tapped in to people’s experiences, their good times and bad. She knows from her own life what it is like to believe and strive for your dreams. Valerie expects people to work their hearts out for the President and never forget where you work and the magnitude. Single mother, woman working to the top in a competitive male dominated world, African, working for change from the grassroots to big business. Valerie is someone here who other people inside the building know they can trust. (need examples.) This Town doesn’t come out until July 16, but BuzzFeed picked up a copy at a Hudson Books bookstore in the Newark Airport, where it was already being sold.

To: simplicity who wrote (724256)	7/3/2013 4:08:38 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576816

The right's desperate search for more white voters By Steve Benen Wed Jul 3, 2013 3:04 PM EDT Fox News' Brit Hume has heard all the arguments about the Republican Party needing a more diverse voting base, but he's not buying it. This on-air commentary aired the other day: Rejecting the argument that the Hispanic vote is necessary to the party's electoral fortunes, Hume called it "baloney," adding, "If you look at the statistics, you find there was one significant bloc of voters who turned out in smaller numbers this time in a major way -- way below expectations, below even their '08 turnout -- and that was white voters." He added that the Hispanic vote "is not nearly as important, still, as the white vote." And why is that it interesting? In part because Hume said the exact opposite soon after the 2012 elections. As MSNBC's Benjy Sarlin explained this week, on election night, Hume called the "demographic" threat posed by Latino voters "absolutely real" and suggested Mitt Romney's "hardline position on immigration" may be to blame for election losses. Hume apparently now thinks Hume's argument is "baloney." But the larger point is that the Fox News anchor isn't the only one making this shift. Shortly after the election, Fox's Sean Hannity was on board with reform to improve the GOP's fortunes, and he's since moved to the right. More to the point, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in January he wants a "comprehensive" immigration bill and then said last month, "There's this narrative being written in the press and by Democrats and, quite frankly by some Republicans, that I am pushing a comprehensive immigration bill, and that's just not true." And what's driving these moves is the growing sentiment in conservative circles that if the Republican Party can only improve its performance among white people -- getting 70% of the vote instead of 60% -- then its demographic death spiral isn't too big a deal after all. It's a thesis Real Clear Politics' Sean Trende has touted for months, which has grown considerably in recent months as Republican opposition to immigration reform has grown. Now, Byron York, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, and Phyllis Schlafly are all making roughly the same argument: Latinos have become part of the Democratic coalition, so the smart move for the GOP is to stop going after them and start boosting white support (beyond where it already is). "Their idea seems to be gaining currency," Frank Sharry, executive director of immigration advocacy group America's Voice, told MSNBC. "Right after the election most of the conservative commentariat said they had to do something to get right with Latino voters. Now there seems to be this bizarre conversation that could only happen in the conservative bubble about how Romney didn't win because he didn't mobilize enough white voters." Sarlin and Mark Murray have pieces that dig deep into the data, and they're well worth your time, but I'd just add one related thought: it's not at all clear how Republicans can boost their performance among white voters so significantly without creating a significant and polarizing backlash that puts them in an even worse electoral position than they're in now. That said, the argument Hume presented appears to be gaining traction. As Paul Waldman noted, the GOP "might just stick with this 'party of white people' thing" and see what happens.