U.S. Politics Newsletter:
November 14, 2008Contents:
Transition News: Page 1
Read about President-Elect Obama and his team as they gear up for the While House
News in Politics: Page 8
With three Senate races still undecided there is still lots brewing in Washington D.C.
Possible Cabinet and Other Appointments: Page 17
Read about the people that are being considered for some of the highest positions in the country.
Transition News:
Obama and McCain to Meet:
Barack Obama and John McCain will meet in Chicago next week, the Obama-Biden transition team announced Friday.
"On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain will meet in Chicago at transition headquarters,” said transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter.
“It's well known that they share an important belief that Americans want and deserve a more effective and efficient government, and will discuss ways to work together to make that a reality. They will be joined in the meeting by Senator Lindsey Graham and Congressman Rahm Emanuel."
The two men spoke by phone Election Night, but have not met in person since the Al Smith dinner in New York on October 16.
Obama and Bush Meet and Lobby Each Other:
At their private Oval Office meeting on Monday, President-elect Barack Obama urged President Bush to support billions of dollars in aid for the struggling auto industry during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress, according to three officials briefed on the meeting.
The officials said Bush privately expressed skepticism about taxpayer money for automakers on the heels of a string of government bailouts for other industries, and the president also urged Obama to help push through a free trade pact with Colombia – a key legacy item for the outgoing administration that is facing stiff resistance from Democrats on Capitol Hill.
But a senior Bush administration official seemed to downplay suggestions that Bush was offering a quid pro quo by saying the White House still believes the trade deal “deserves to pass on its own merits” without being linked to anything else.
The officials familiar with the meeting said Obama made the case that dramatic action needs to be taken this year – rather than after he is sworn into office – because the Big Three U.S. automakers are bleeding cash at an alarming rate.
One of the officials noted that about one in ten jobs in America are tied to the auto industry, and if one of the companies goes bankrupt it could have a massive spillover effect into the credit industry and other sectors. “The numbers are so staggering,” said the official. “It’s a huge piece of the financial fabric of the country.”
The senior Bush administration official said the White House is “open to ideas from Congress to accelerate funds they’ve already appropriated” to help the auto industry.
But the administration official said support would come “as long as funding will continue to go to viable firms and with strong taxpayer protections” linked to the auto industry aid.
An official in the auto industry told CNN that bringing the Colombian pact into the negotiations could be a poison pill that prevents passage of an auto industry package. But a senior Democratic aide suggested Congress may be willing to call Bush’s bluff and try to pass an auto industry aid package without the trade deal.
The senior aide said Democrats do not believe “this president wants to add the demise of GM to his legacy list.”
Obama Picks Representatives for Summit:
President-elect Barack Obama's transition team announced Wednesday that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach will represent the incoming administration at the G-20 economic summit being hosted by President Bush on November 15.
Obama himself will not attend the summit.
Albright and Leach are "an experienced and bipartisan team," Obama Senior Foreign Policy Advisor Denis McDonough said in a statement.
McDonough also noted, however, that there is only "one president at a time in the United States," and that "President Bush should be commended for calling the summit."
Albright, a Democrat, served as secretary of state during the Clinton administration. Leach, a Republican, represented Iowa's second congressional district from 1977 to 2007. He endorsed Obama in August.
Bush announced the summit of the world's 20 largest industrialized nations and developing economies as a way to help coordinate the international response to the global financial meltdown.
Emmanuel Brushes Off Partisan Charges:
Rep. Rahm Emanuel insisted Sunday that he would help President-elect Barack Obama work in a bipartisan fashion, brushing off criticism that he would be a “hyper-partisan” chief of staff.
“President Obama is very clear, as you look at his career, both in the state senate, U.S. Senate, and the campaign, that we have to govern in a bipartisan fashion,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“The challenges are big enough that there's going to be an ability for people of both parties, as well as independents, to contribute ideas to help meet the challenges on health care, energy, tax reform, education,” he said.
Obama announced last week that he had chosen Emanuel to be his chief of staff.
The Republican National Committee put out a press release shortly thereafter that said, “Obama’s Broken Promise: After promising change, Obama selects hyper-partisan wedded to special interests.” Minority Leader John Boehner called Emanuel an “ironic choice” for a president-elect who promised to “govern from the center.”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, however, agreed with Democrats and called Emanuel a “wise choice.”
"Rahm knows Capitol Hill and has great political skills. He can be a tough partisan but also understands the need to work together. He is well-suited for the position of White House chief of staff," the South Carolina senator said.
Graham said he and Emanuel worked together during the presidential debate negotiations, and "when we hit a rough spot, he always looked for a path forward."
Emanuel, who has a reputation as a tough political infighter, is credited with helping Democrats take control of the House in 2006.
He was elected to the House in 2002 and is the fourth highest-ranking member of the chamber's Democratic leadership. He worked on President Clinton's first presidential campaign and served as a White House adviser to Clinton.
The Chicago politician said Sunday that it will take a joint effort from leaders of both parties to tackle the challenges facing the country.
“Because the challenges … whether on the national security front or on the economic, are looming large, and they're going to require both parties and leaders of both parties, as well as independents, to offer up ideas to how to meet those challenges,” he said.
Emanuel also said he thought Sen. John McCain would be a “partner” in working to solve those problems.
Questionnaire to Work for Obama:
The Obama campaign is seriously vetting all candidates for high level positions. Attached to this email you will find the questionnaire that prospective cabinet members are being required to complete. The nine page document asks for things ranging from all tax documents to all live in partners you have had to any political connections that could be exploited. Candidates must be willing to tell all to be considered for these jobs.
Biden Speaks to Foreign Leaders:
Vice President-elect Joe Biden spoke with eight foreign leaders earlier this week, the transition office announced Thursday, to express “his thanks and appreciation for their congratulations on the election.”
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee talked to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Afghan president Hamid Karzai, King Abdullah of Jordan and Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Monday and Tuesday.
In addition, the country that got the most calls was Israel, with Biden speaking to three of its most senior politicians: Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister (and former prime minister) Ehud Barak and Likud Party leader (and former Prime Minister) Binyamin Netanyahu.
The country’s Jerusalem Post reports that Livni told Biden to keep up the pressure on Iran’s nuclear program and to continue to fight against extremists in the region. Livni is running against both Netanyahu and Barak in Israel’s February elections to succeed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Biden is expected to play an instrumental role in foreign policy in the Obama administration when they are sworn on January 20. When Republicans accused Obama during the campaign of not wholeheartedly supporting Israel, Biden beat back the accusations with his own friendship with the country during his 35-year tenure in the Senate.
“My support for Israel begins in my stomach, goes to my heart and ends up in my head,” Biden said to a Jewish group in late September. “I guarantee you, I would not have joined Barack Obama’s ticket as vice president, were [there] any doubt, even the slightest doubt, that he shares the same commitment to Israel that I share.”
The transition office has been regularly releasing the names of foreign leaders that President-elect Barack Obama has spoken with, evidence of Obama and Biden’s campaign pledge to “restore America’s standing in the world,” as Biden regularly put it on the stump.
Iran Blasts Obama’s Nuclear Criticisms:
Iran's parliament speaker has criticized U.S. President-elect Barack Obama for saying that Iran's development of a nuclear weapon is unacceptable.
Ali Larijani said on Saturday Obama should apply his campaign message of change to U.S. dealings with Iran.
"Obama must know that the change that he talks about is not simply a superficial changing of colors or tactics," Larijani said in comments carried by the semi-official Mehr News Agency.
"What is expected is a change in strategy, not the repetition of objections to Iran's nuclear program which will be taking a step in the wrong direction."
In his first post-election news conference Friday afternoon, Obama reiterated that he believes a nuclear-armed Iran would be "unacceptable." He also said he would help mount an international effort to prevent it from happening.
Larijani said U.S. behavior toward Iran "will not change so simply," but that Obama's election showed internal conditions in the United States have shifted.
Obama Facing High Expectations:
The overall public mood may still be sour at the moment, but a new national poll suggests that most Americans think Barack Obama will make major accomplishments as president of the United States.
Nearly two-thirds of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday said President-elect Obama will change the country for the better. Twenty-five percent said he won't change the country either way, and only 9 percent indicated they think Obama will change the country for the worse.
"The bar is being set awfully high for an Obama presidency," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
According to the poll, most people think it's likely that Obama will improve race relations, improve economic conditions, bring stability to the financial markets, make the United States safer from terrorism, reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil, reduce global warming, win the war in Afghanistan, and remove U.S. troops from Iraq without causing a major upheaval in that country.
"That's a pretty big to-do list," said Holland.
In a question separate from whether Obama will change the country for the better, 76 percent of poll respondents said the country will be better off four years from now, while 19 percent say it will be worse.
Three-quarters of those polled also have a favorable view of Obama, up 12 points since the election. Among black Americans the number was 99 percent, while among Republicans it was 41 percent.
The overall 75 percent favorable rating "makes Obama the most popular president-elect in at least a quarter of a century," Holland said.
In November of 1980, after his landslide victory over incumbent President Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan's favorable rating was 67 percent. Eight years later, the elder George Bush had a favorable rating of only 50 percent immediately after his win in the 1988 election. When Bill Clinton beat Bush
four years later, his favorable rating was 60 percent just after the election.
And after the Florida recount ended in December of 2000, George W. Bush had a 59 percent favorable rating.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted November 6-9, with 1,246 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Obama Launches Transition Website:
Barack Obama launched the official government Web site for the presidential transition on Thursday, giving it a look and feel that suggests the new president will utilize the Internet to a much greater degree than his predecessor.
The site is a slightly more formal-looking incarnation of Obama’s campaign web site that features a blue-shaded presidential seal and a countdown clock to the Inauguration on January 20. There are biographies not only of Obama and Joe Biden, but also the directors of his transition team: John Podesta, Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse. The web site outlines Obama’s policy agenda, on issues from Iraq to social security to urban policy.
While the site lacks the innovative community organizing tools that helped propel the Illinois senator to the presidency, one section of the site does ask for user-generated content, asking Americans to submit stories about “what this campaign and this election means to you” and “where President-Elect Obama should lead this country.”
There is a transition blog, which at the moment only features a video of Obama’s Tuesday victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park.
One link on the site is sure to get a flood of clicks: the “Jobs” section.
“All staff appointments chosen for this administration will be committed to fulfilling Obama’s campaign promises, to rebuilding our government, and to serving the American people again,” the site says.
Obama to Resign Senate Seat:
President-elect Barack Obama has announced that he will officially resign his Senate seat as of this Sunday.
“It has been one of the highest honors and privileges of my life to have served the people of Illinois in the United States Senate,” he said in a statement released by his campaign Thursday.
“In a state that represents the crossroads of a nation, I have met so many men and women who’ve taken different journeys, but hold common hopes for their children’s future. It is these Illinois families and their stories that will stay with me as I leave the United States Senate and begin the hard task of fulfilling the simple hopes and common dreams of all Americans as our nation’s next President.”
Obama’s Senate office will close sometime within the next two months. His Senate staff will spend that time coordinating with his replacement, advising constituents with open requests, and archiving documents for Obama’s presidential library.
Several Illinois Democrats — including Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth, a former congressional candidate who now serves in Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration – have been mentioned as possible Senate replacements for Obama.
Blagojevich, who will appoint Obama’s successor, announced last week that he was assembling a panel to vet likely candidates. Obama’s replacement would be up for re-election in 2010.
Vice president-elect Joe Biden – who was also re-elected to his Delaware Senate seat on November 4 — told an interviewer several weeks ago that he would resign when he's sworn in as vice president in January.
Obama Questions What to Do with Guantanamo Bay Prisoners:
President-elect Obama's transition team has begun examining what to do with suspected terrorists at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which Obama has pledged to close, an aide said Monday.
Denis McDonough, a senior adviser to the incoming Democrat, told CNN no decisions have been made about what to do with the roughly 250 inmates there, "and there is no process in place to make that decision until his national security and legal teams are assembled."
But officials close to the Obama team said Monday that the incoming administration is pondering whether to try some of the Guantanamo Bay inmates in existing federal courts; set up a special national security court to deal with cases involving the most sensitive intelligence information; or release others.
The scenario would eliminate the military commissions set up by the Bush administration to prosecute some of the top al Qaeda figures now held at the facility, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the lead plotter of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
The commissions have been delayed for years by legal challenges, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled an earlier version of them unconstitutional in 2006.
In a full-page ad in The New York Times on Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union urged Obama to close the prison camp on his first day in office, "with the stroke of a pen."
But in an October 31 interview with CNN, Obama said only that he would close the facility "as quickly as we can do prudently."
"I am not going to give a time certain because I think what we have to do is evaluate all those who are still being held in Gitmo," he said. "We have to put in place appropriate plans to make sure they are tried, convicted and punished to the full extent of the law, and that's going to require, I think, a
review of the existing cases, which I have not had the opportunity to do."
News In Politics:
Probable Re-Count in Minnesota Senate Race:
For the second time in a week, Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman's camp is labeling him the winner in Minnesota's far-from-over Senate race.
Coleman leads Democratic challenger Al Franken by just 206 votes as the first round of tallying comes to a close Monday evening.
"Sen. Coleman remains the winner in this election despite unexplained discrepancies in reporting …that have virtually all benefited the Franken campaign," Coleman spokesman Tom Erickson said in a statement.
That result means little at this point: Minnesota law mandates a recount when the margin of victory in a race is less than .5 percent.
This instance falls well within that gap — more than 2.4 million Minnesotans cast votes in this year's Senate race.
Coleman's lead has shrunk since votes were first tabulated earlier in the week. On Wednesday, he led by 725 votes. Representatives with the Coleman campaign have charged that irregularities in tabulation throughout the week have unfairly benefited their opponent, Al Franken.
Franken spokesman Andy Barr dismissed the claim. "As much as the Coleman campaign would like to play political games and baselessly cast doubt on this process," Barr wrote in an e-mail to CNN, "we will continue to work to ensure that every vote is properly counted."
Barr also suggested that it would be wrong for anyone to declare victory before the statewide hand recount is complete. That process is set to begin November 19, and could last until mid-December.
Senator-Elect Hagan Drops ‘Godless Lawsuit”:
U.S. Sen.-elect Kay Hagan withdrew her defamation and libel lawsuit Thursday against incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole for a campaign commercial that Hagan alleged questioned her Christianity.
Hagan spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan said the papers were filed Thursday afternoon in Wake County court, putting an end to the legal fight over a controversial TV ad in the final week of the campaign ultimately won by Hagan.
The ad only ran for a few days but became a hot issue. Dole brought up her campaign rival's attendance at a fundraiser hosted by an adviser to the Godless Americans Political Action Committee, an atheist advocacy group.
Flanagan said Hagan can spend her time better working to help families hurt by the bad economy instead of pursuing a lawsuit that "would just continue the focus on a very personal and negative attack against Kay."
"It's clear that the people of North Carolina have rejected personal attacks aimed at dividing people of this state instead of bringing them together to solve the problems at hand," Flanagan said.
Dole campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley declined to comment on ending the suit.
Dole's 30-second advertisement showed clips of some members of the Godless Americans committee talking about some of their goals, such as taking "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance and removing "In God We Trust" from U.S. currency.
It went on to question why Hagan went to the fundraiser. The ad ended with a picture of Hagan while another woman declares in the background, "There is no God!"
Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat and state senator, responded quickly to the commercial with the lawsuit and her own commercial accusing Dole of breaking the Bible's Ninth Commandment by bearing false witness. A Presbyterian church elder who teaches Sunday school, Hagan also held a news conference with her family and her pastor.
Dole called the lawsuit frivolous and the commercial factual and designed to question Hagan's agenda and associations -- not her faith.
The Republican's campaign also used the September fundraiser in Boston that Hagan attended at the home of Woody Kaplan in automated phone calls in the campaign's last weekend.
The fundraisers was not billed as a Godless Americans event, and other hosts included an ambassador and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee. Dole's campaign sent a press release on the subject about a month before the event.
Hagan received nearly 53 percent of the vote in her upset of Dole, the one-term senator, former Cabinet secretary and head of the American Red Cross
Begich Pulls in the Lead in Alaska Senate Race
Republican Sen. Ted Stevens has fallen 814 votes behind Democratic challenger Mark Begich as vote counting continues in Alaska.
The Anchorage mayor was trailing Stevens in the initial count, which did not include at least 90,000 absentee, early and provisional ballots.
With nearly two-thirds of those votes now tallied, Begich has taken the lead. An estimated 40,000 ballots have yet to be counted – a majority of them from the area of the state that includes Anchorage, according to state elections officials.
Palin Blames Bush Record for GOP Loss:
Sarah Palin told local reporters in Alaska that unhappiness with the Bush administration’s Iraq war policy and spending record were responsible for the GOP ticket’s defeat this year.
“I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a $10 trillion debt in a Republican administration?” Palin told the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska’s KTUU Channel 2.
“How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration? If we're talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing. So people desiring change I think went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could. It's amazing that we did as well as we did.”
Palin returned to Alaska last week amid growing speculation about her political future. The Alaska governor is slated to attend the Republican Governors Association’s meeting in Miami this week.
Who Can Save the Republican Party?:
As Republican leaders sift through the ruins of the 2008 election and debate the party's future at the Republican Governors Association meeting this week, one of the GOP's potential standard-bearers is instead on a Caribbean cruise.
But it isn't just any cruise and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney isn't just any Republican. Since the economy began its historic downturn six weeks ago, Romney's stock in his party appears to have skyrocketed.
The former business consultant and founder of Bain Capital handled economic issues during his campaign with an ease and confidence that seemed to elude Sen. John McCain. As the stock market tanked throughout the fall, a growing chorus of conservative pundits speculated Romney would have boosted the GOP ticket considerably more than Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin did.
Now the onetime front-runner for the Republican nomination is schmoozing influential party insiders on the National Review's annual cruise -- a gathering of 700 conservative activists and the same forum where Palin wowed the movement's media elite last year, beginning her meteoric rise from obscure governor to vice presidential nominee.
But even as Romney publicly declares he has no intentions to run again, several former aides said they believe he will, and this week's get-together with leading conservatives is only the latest sign the man who spent more than $50 million of his own money to vie for the party's nomination last year is itching to do it again.
After all, in many ways Romney's campaign for 2012 appeared to begin the instant he abandoned his primary bid in February. Instead of the conventional location befitting most losing candidates -- his home state, surrounded by friends and family -- Romney broke the news to grass-roots activists at a gathering in Washington.
The last-minute announcement was greeted with cries of surprise and was seen as a public attempt to bolster his standing with the key GOP voting bloc that largely broke former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's way through the first round of primary contests.
"There he was addressing the largest gathering every year of conservatives, and it was extremely symbolic in many ways," said Matt Lewis, a writer for the conservative Web site Townhall.com. "That's where he chose to say for the good of the movement he was going to get out. It was very well-received by most people, and he is now in a better position to garner more conservative support because of it."
After bowing out, Romney maintained a constant presence on the campaign trail and cable news circuit on McCain's behalf, signaling to political observers that he still harbored presidential ambitions, even after he was passed up for the No. 2 spot on the party's ticket.
Romney also has maintained close relationships with key supporters in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, according to party officials there, and could easily revive the infrastructure he built should he launch another bid.
If the economy continues to flail after four years of Democratic rule, Romney's economic acumen may be in demand when it comes to restoring GOP power to the White House.
Former Clinton Advisor to Run for VA Governor:
Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman filed papers Monday forming an exploratory committee to run for Virginia governor.
Terry McAuliffe was widely expected to make his decision after Election Day. The former Democratic National Committee chairman will now do a 60 day listening tour of the state.
In September, McAuliffe hired longtime Virginia political consultant Mo Elleithee to start planning a possible statewide campaign, should he decide to run. Elleithee spent the last year working alongside McAuliffe in the Clinton campaign as a senior spokesman, but in recent years he has also helped steer Tim Kaine and Mark Warner to signature Democratic victories in Virginia.
Should he run, McAuliffe will face off in next year’s Democratic primary against state Sen. Creigh Deeds and State House Rep. Brian Moran. Virginia’s Attorney General Bob McDonnell is expected to run for the Republican nomination unopposed.
Franken Files Suit Over Absentee Ballots:
Democrat Al Franken's campaign filed a lawsuit Thursday in Ramsey County, Minnesota, requesting the names of all individuals who filed a rejected absentee ballot in the Senate race between the former comedian and incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.
Mark Elias, lead recount attorney for Franken, said many absentee ballots are rejected for insufficient reasons, offering the example of an elderly woman who'd suffered a recent stroke which affected her signature, and kept it from matching the one her county had on file.
"This is not a lawsuit about putting ballots in the count or not in the count," Elias said. "This is about giving us access to the data that will allow us to determine whether or not there are lawful ballots…[that] weren’t counted."
The current tally of votes puts Coleman 206 votes ahead of Franken out of about 2.5 million cast in that contest. A hand recount of the Senate race is set to begin November 19.
Elias told reporters at a Thursday press conference that the campaign has asked each county for a list of the people whose absentee ballots were rejected. Elias, along with Franken spokesman Andy Barr, could not say exactly how many counties have offered their lists and how many have not, but added that Ramsey County has not.
The campaign's hope, according to Elias, is that Ramsey County would side in their favor and set a precedent that would immediately be followed by all counties in the state.
Elias and Barr could not say what they plan do with the lists of names if were given them but added that calling each person whose absentee ballot was rejected would not be out of the picture.
"Lets see what happens and then we will see what our next steps are," Elias said.
Whether or not any of the rejected ballots might be counted or not is unclear, but Elias said he does plan on making an appeal to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's newly-formed canvassing board. A spokesman for the Secretary of State's office was not immediately available for comment.
Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan fired back, calling the Franken team's efforts Thursday an attempt to "strong arm" officials into "counting invalid ballots in order to influence the outcome."
"We have grave concerns that the private information requested by the Franken campaign could lead to the harassment of Minnesota voters through visits by Franken campaign or Democratic Party operatives to their homes," said Sheehan.
Gun Sales Skyrocket After Obama Election:
Bernie Conatser has never seen business this good.
The owner of a gun shop in the Washington suburb of Manassas, Virginia, Conatser said sales have doubled or tripled the numbers he racked up in late October. Saturday, he said, he did as much business as he would normally do in a week.
"I have been in business for 12 years, and I was here for Y2K, September 11th, Katrina," Conatser said as a steady stream of customers browsed what remained of his stock. "And all of those were big events, and we did notice a spike in business, but nothing on the order of what we are seeing right now."
Weapons dealers in much of the United States are reporting sharply higher sales since Barack Obama won the presidency a week ago. Buyers and sellers attribute the surge to worries that Obama and a Democratic-controlled Congress will move to restrict firearm ownership, despite the insistence of campaign aides that the president-elect supports gun rights and considers the issue a low priority.
According to FBI figures for the week of November 3-9, the bureau received more than 374,000 requests for background checks on gun purchasers — a nearly 49 percent increase over the same period in 2007. Conatser said his store, Virginia Arms Company, has run out of some models — such as the AR-15 rifle, the civilian version of the military's M-16 — and is running low on others.
Such assault weapons are among the firearms that gun dealers and customers say they fear Obama will hit with new restrictions, or even take off the market.
Virginia gun owner Kyle Lewandowski said he was buying a .45-caliber pistol to "hedge my bets."
"Every election year, you have to worry about your rights being eroded a little bit at a time," he said. But he added, "I also knew, because of the Democrat majority and because of the election, everybody would have the same reaction I did."
Dealers in Colorado, Ohio, Connecticut and New Hampshire also reported seeing major increases.
Awkward Press Conference for Republican Governors:
Two hours before Thursday morning’s press conference at the Republican Governors Association — her first since the Republican presidential ticket lost last week — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was still scheduled to appear alone. Instead, she spoke with a row of fellow governors standing silently behind her.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told CNN producer Evan Glass that they all met at 9 a.m. — an hour-and-a-half before the press conference’s scheduled start time — and by then it had been "decided" that they'd all go out together.
An RGA official told CNN the reason for the change is a "long story."
He said that when the governors were all at their private morning meeting, someone brought up the desire to get beyond what happened in the McCain campaign and look towards 2009 and 2010.
Then, this source said, Palin piped up and said she agreed that she didn't want to talk about the past.
This source insists that it was then decided that the other governors in the meeting would go with her to her press conference as a "show of unity."
The source admitted that it may not have been easy for some "big egos" to go in and stand behind her, but they knew they'd be doing so.
Not present: the conference host, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. A Florida GOP source tells CNN "he didn't know about it,” because he wasn't at the morning meeting.
In another shift, Palin — who had been slated to take questions for 20 minutes or so — took just four press queries.
Why did Texas Gov. Rick Perry cut it off so fast?
"We were running behind schedule," insisted the GOP official.
Palin may not have wanted to talk about the past, but her speech was almost entirely about the McCain campaign; she included little in the way of detailed ideas about the way forward for Republicans, the theme of the panel.
RNC to File Suit over Law Championed by McCain:
The Republican National Committee is taking aim at the campaign finance reform law that is one of the trademark legislative achievements of the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain.
The RNC announced Thursday that it will file two lawsuits challenging portions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, a major overhaul of federal campaign finance law enacted in 2002 that ban so-called “soft money” from the federal elections and that is commonly referred to as the “McCain-Feingold” bill after its two Senate sponsors.
A suit to be filed in Louisiana federal district court challenges the law’s limits on the amount of money national and state political parties may spend in coordination with candidates for seeking federal offices.
A second suit to be filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., challenges the McCain-Feingold bill’s ban on the use of “soft money” for activities that are not related to campaigns for federal office.
The RNC is charging that challenged portions of the law violate the First Amendment. “The RNC must have the ability to support state candidates, coordinate expenditures with our candidates, and truly engage in political activity on a national level,” RNC chairman Mike Duncan said in a statement released Thursday. “The RNC has operated under and complied with these provisions of the law since their enactment, and as applied it is unconstitutional,” Duncan added.
Duncan and RNC lawyers are set to discuss the two suits with reporters in a conference call Thursday afternoon.
McCain on Campaign Trail in Georgia:
Nine days after losing the presidential election to Barack Obama, John McCain is back on the campaign trail.
The former GOP presidential nominee will stump for fellow Republican senator Saxby Chambliss today in Georgia.
The freshman senator most likely faces a run-off election December 2 against Democrat Jim Martin, a former state lawmaker.
At the start of the campaign, Chambliss was the heavy favorite in the race. But the contest tightened, and neither candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote on Election Day, thanks in part to a third-party candidate who won 3 percent of the vote. The race appears headed to a runoff between Chambliss and Martin.
The runoff is expected to become official later this week, after the state certifies the election results. Unofficial tallies show Chambliss with 49.8 percent of the vote, just short of the 50 percent plus one vote need to win. Martin has 46.8 percent of the vote.
McCain will join Chambliss at a campaign rally in suburban Atlanta this afternoon. McCain won Georgia's presidential vote 52 percent to 47 percent. President Bush carried the state by 17 points in his 2004 re-election victory.
Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is expected to campaign for Chambliss in Georgia this weekend, and an appearance by another former Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, is also possible.
Martin is hoping that President-elect Obama will come down to Georgia for an assist. While there's no guarantee that will happen, Obama is dispatching campaign aides to Georgia to help Martin in his runoff efforts.
A victory by the Democrats in Georgia could help determine if the party reaches its goal of reaching 60 Senate seats, which would give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the chamber. A filibuster is a move that allows the minority party in the Senate to stall and even block votes on legislation. Sixty votes are needed to overcome a filibuster.
Reid Will Keep Lieberman with the Democrats:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Sunday he's still trying to keep Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman within the Democratic caucus despite anger over Lieberman's support of Republican presidential nominee John McCain.
While he has opposed Democratic efforts to end the war in Iraq, "Joe Lieberman votes with me a lot more than a lot of my senators," Reid told CNN's "Late Edition."
"Joe Lieberman is not some right-wing nutcase," he said. "Joe Lieberman is one of the most progressive people ever to come from the state of Connecticut."
Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent, broke with the party over the war in Iraq and ran as an independent after losing the party's nomination in 2006. Since then, he has been the 51st vote that kept the Senate in Democratic hands.
Lieberman also was Al Gore's running mate on the 2000 Democratic ticket.
But this year, he was a fixture on the campaign trail with McCain — and now that Democrats have gained at least six seats in the chamber, Reid is under pressure from many Democrats to punish Lieberman for harsh criticism of Sen. Barack Obama in a speech at the Republican convention.
"Sen. Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But, my friends, eloquence is no substitute for a record," Lieberman said at the Republican convention in early September.
Lieberman charged that Obama had not reached across party lines to "get anything significant done" and said that the McCain-Palin ticket was "the real ticket for change."
Possible Cabinet and Other Appointments:
Secretary of State:
Senator Hillary Clinton:
Two sources close to the Obama transition team tell CNN that Senator Hillary Clinton’s name has been mentioned as a possible candidate for Secretary of State.
One source close to Hillary Clinton tells CNN that as of early yesterday, Senator Clinton had not been contacted by the transition team about a possible cabinet appointment. This same source tells CNN that Senator Clinton would not necessarily dismiss such an offer.
A spokesman for Hillary Clinton, Philippe Reines, tells CNN “Any speculation about cabinet or other administration appointments is really for President-Elect Obama's transition team to address.”
On Monday night, while walking into an awards ceremony in New York, Senator Clinton was asked if she would consider taking a post in the Obama administration. She replied, "I am happy being a Senator from New York, I love this state and this city. I am looking at the long list of things I have to catch up on and do. But I want to be a good partner and I want to do everything I can to make sure his agenda is going to be successful."
Clinton and Obama met on Thursday afternoon in Chicago. There has been no announcement of a position for her in the administration.
Senator John Kerry:
A current senator from Massachusetts and the former 2004 Democratic Candidate for president is rumored to be high on the list for the job.
Senator Chris Dodd:
Current senator from Connecticut and former presidential candidate who dropped out early and quickly endorsed Barack Obama in the primary season.
Governor Bill Richardson:
Current governor of New Mexico and former democratic presidential candidate. When he dropped out he endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. He has lots of foreign policy experience as a former Ambassador to the United Nations and also a former Secretary of Energy.
Richard Holbrooke:
Former Ambassador Richard Holbrooke is a top-ranking American diplomat, magazine editor, author, Peace Corps official, and investment banker. He is also the only person to have held the Assistant Secretary of State position for two different regions of the world (Asia from 1977–1981, and Europe from 1994–1996), and has been nominated seven times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Secretary of Defense:
Secretary Robert Gates:
there are indications current Defense Secretary Robert Gates will stay at the post "for a certain period." Gates, the former CIA Director under the first President Bush, has been praised by members of both parties for his leadership at the Pentagon over the last two years. Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, a former United States Army Captain and a member of the Armed Services Committee, is acting as the go-between with Gates.
Attorney General:
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who also served as that state's attorney general, is said to be a "very real possibility" for U.S. attorney general. Napolitano, who also endorsed Obama early in the primary process, was named earlier this week to the Obama transition team. She's also served as a U.S. attorney from Arizona.
Secretary of Commerce:
For Secretary of Commerce, former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, Time Warner Chairman Dick Parsons, prominent Chicago Businesswoman Penny Pritzker, and University of California economist Laura Tyson are all under consideration.
Secretary of Treasury:
Speculation about Obama's treasury secretary has centered on Lawrence Summers, though he's faced controversy for sexist comments he made while serving as president of Harvard University.
Another name being mentioned: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.
"Though he's not a person who would stay four or eight years, given his age, but to get things started, [he] would be a fabulous choice," said Alan Blinder, the former vice chairman of the Fed.
Vice President’s Chief of Staff:
Ron Klain:
Ron Klain, former chief of staff for Vice President Al Gore, has agreed to serve in the same post under Vice President-elect Joe Biden, a Democratic source involved in the transition tells CNN.
Klain also served as general counsel of Gore's Florida recount effort, and was recently portrayed by Kevin Spacey in an HBO movie about the event. Reached by CNN, Klain would not confirm or deny reports he had accepted the position, but the Democratic source said it was a "done deal."
Klain previously worked with Biden when he served as chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the early 1990's. At that time, Biden was chairman of the committee.
Klain is a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Law School.
Willing to Serve:
Sarah Palin:
Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said Wednesday she would be honored to help out President-elect Barack Obama in his new administration, even if he did hang around with an "unrepentant domestic terrorist."
The Alaska governor said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer that if Obama asked her for help on some of the issues she highlighted during this year's campaign, such as energy or services for special-needs children, "It would be my honor to assist and support our new president and the new administration."
"And I speak for other Republicans and Republican governors, also," said Palin, whom Sen. John McCain tapped as his running mate in August. "They would be willing also to seize this opportunity that we have to progress this nation together, in a united front."
But asked moments later about some of the tough rhetoric she hurled from the stump, she said she was "still concerned" about Obama's ties to former Weather Underground member-turned-Chicago college professor William Ayers.
"If anybody still wants to talk about it, I will," she said. "Because this is an unrepentant domestic terrorist who had campaigned to blow up, to destroy our Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol.
"That's an association that still bothers me, and I think it's fair to still talk about it," she continued. "However the campaign is over. That chapter is closed. Now is the time to move on and make sure all of us are doing all that we can to progress this nation."
Palin was attending the annual Republican Governors Association convention in Miami, Florida. She was interviewed for CNN's "The Situation Room" — the latest of several high-profile appearances for the ex-VP candidate — and will also appear Wednesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live."
Not on the List:
Al Gore:
Al Gore won't be serving in the Obama administration, his spokeswoman said Thursday.
The former vice president, winner of the Nobel prize for his environmental education efforts, had been considered a likely candidate for the post of "climate czar."
"Former Vice President Gore does not intend to seek or accept any formal position in government," Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider told the Washington Times. "He feels very strong right now that the best thing for him to do is to build support for the bold changes that we have to make to solve the climate crisis."
