Kyl not seeking re-election in 2012

  • Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, will not seek re-election in 2012
  • Kyl's retirement sets off a fight within the GOP Senate leadership
  • Kyl said he basically made his decision to retire after winning re-election in 2006
  • Kyl is the fifth senator to announce he will leave the Senate after 2012

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/AIj4rF-GASw/index.html

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Can Obama be beaten in 2012?

Editor's note: Ed Rollins, a senior political contributor for CNN, is senior presidential fellow at the Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University. He is a principal with the Dilenschneider Group, a global public relations firm. He was White House political director for President Ronald Reagan and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

New York (CNN) -- With less than a year to go till the Iowa caucus on February 6, 2012, the conventional wisdom is that President Obama is vulnerable, but there is no Republican who can beat him.

In a new CNN poll, 26% of registered voters say they will definitely vote for Obama and 37% say they won't. If you add in those leaning one way or the other, it turns out that 47% will probably or definitely vote for Obama and 51% probably or definitely won't.

What does a poll like this mean with more than 20 months to go to Election Day? Not much! The hardest thing for pundits like myself and other talking heads is to say "I don't know."

The easiest thing is to argue that a poll says something and that only we who have our heads buried in polls can interpret it. Well nobody knows what you, the electorate, are going to think in the months ahead -- or what events are going to dominate the national and international agenda.

Politics: An early look at the Republican field for 2012

The safest bet is that Obama will be the Democratic nominee. You can go to the bank on that one. And my counsel is to stay away from betting this far in advance on the Republican side. Unless you're privy to divine inspiration, the best thing to do is to watch the process evolve.

One thing that you should know though is there are some extremely competent candidates who I believe will run -- and that whoever wins the GOP nomination will be a formidable opponent for Obama.

Unlike past Republican races, there is no establishment candidate or heir apparent who automatically picks up the mantle. From 1952 until 2008, every Republican presidential ticket -- except 1964, the year of Barry Goldwater -- included a Nixon, a Bush, or a Dole. All were Washington insiders and well-known figures when they ran either for vice president or president.

Nixon and George H.W. Bush had been vice president before they became president. Dole had been the vice presidential candidate before he was the presidential nominee in 1996. George W. Bush was obviously the son.

This time the race is totally open: no front-runners, no sure winners, no sons, daughters or spouses running as of now.

Opinion: Gay civil rights group splits Republicans

There are two brackets of potential candidates. The first is mostly made up of the survivors of the 2008 race. Former Govs. Huckabee and Romney were the two runner-ups to John McCain in 2008 and Sarah Palin, who was plucked from the obscurity of the Alaska governorship to be McCain's running mate, became an overnight sensation. Huckabee got the most delegates except for McCain and won the Iowa caucuses and several Southern state primaries.

Romney got the most popular votes except for McCain and won his home state of Massachusetts, Michigan -- the state where his father was governor in the 60's and where he grew up -- and Utah, the home of his Mormon religion.

The Palin story needs no retelling here. Most people think that if she were the GOP nominee, Obama would win.

These three lead all polls, and have the highest name recognition, without any one of them being a clear-cut favorite.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/7OT7SSA8shw/index.html

hillary clinton george w bush nancy pelosi harry reid john mccain

To Some In GOP, Proposed Cuts Don't Go Far Enough

The GOP leadership promised to cut $100 billion from the budget. Their proposed cuts, to be unveiled Thursday, come close to that mark only if they are counted as cuts to President Obama's spending proposals last year. They are smaller if you prorate them to what's been spent this fiscal year.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/10/133637851/to-some-in-gop-proposed-cuts-dont-go-far-enough?ft=1&f=1014

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Teeny Janitors Attack Gulf Spill, Then Vanish

Lurking beneath the sea could be nature's most efficient cleanup crew ? tiny organisms with an insatiable appetite for methane. An oceanographer says the giant underwater gas plume that sparked alarm last year appears to be gone.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/02/09/133566035/teeny-janitors-attack-gulf-spill-then-vanish?ft=1&f=1007

hamid karzai barak obama hillary clinton george w bush nancy pelosi

New York Stock Exchange Could Be Bought By German Bourse

The company that operates the New York Stock Exchange could soon be acquired by a European company in a deal that could be announced as soon as next week.

NYSE Euronext, the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange and stock and derivatives markets throughout Europe, has confirmed it's in advanced talks with Deutsche Boerse, which owns the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The deal would create the world's largest financial exchange with headquarters in both Europe and the U.S.

Deutsche Bourse would control 60 percent of the shares, which means the ownership of the iconic New York Stock Exchange would be in foreign hands for the first time.

The deal has to be approved by regulators in both the United states and Europe who have expressed reservations about such a merger in the past.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/133639389/new-york-stock-exchange-could-be-bought-by-germans?ft=1&f=1004

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Obama Lays a Trap for Eventual GOP Nominee

Next year?s election is shaping up as another ideological struggle between right and left, a situation President Obama is working overtime to avoid.

Some of the president?s supporters are disappointed that he has not laid out a big and bold agenda for the second half of his term and is instead focused on advancing and implementing the work he has already begun. After two years of towering ambitions, Obama is offering a 25-year plan for high-speed rail and some tax-code simplifications. Audacity has given way to incrementalism.

Part of this is practical. The Democratic supermajorities of his first two years have been replaced by arguably the most conservative House since the Coolidge Republicans and the Senate is more evenly divided.

But another part is political calculation. Obama is not looking for 2012 to be an ideological clash but rather a debate over details.

Democrats did so poorly in 2010 because the election was a national referendum on Obama?s agenda in the first two years. It was all bold strokes and black and white choices ? ?Repeal and replace? versus Obamacare, small government versus big government; Tea Party versus Washington.

In a right-of-center nation, a debate framed along those lines will always favor the Republicans. Add in the nation?s long-term economic anemia and you get the recipe for Democrats losing 63 House seats.

Remember the oft-repeated complaint of a decade ago that there wasn?t much difference between Republicans and Democrats? George W. Bush and Al Gore were debating which kind of Social Security reform would be best and the exact dimensions of the ?lockbox.?

There may have been deep ideological differences between Bush and Gore, but neither cast the election as some epochal question on the fate of the nation or the direction of the government. At a time of peace and prosperity, they nibbled around the edges of some big issues, but mostly treated the contest like the Pepsi challenge ? ?Surprise, you picked the Republican!?

You certainly can?t say the same things today.

Democrats have moved sharply to the left. Opposition to the Iraq war empowered Obama?s liberal wing of the party and his 2008 victory cemented those gains. Meanwhile, Republicans have gone through a harsh ideological scouring during their swift descent into minority status.

And for a backdrop, you have economic anxiety at home and a war with radical Islamists abroad. Stark choices and high stakes: As a former president born 100 years ago this week might have said, ?A time for choosing.?

The two major parties haven?t offered such sharply different visions for the nation since the 1980s, and that?s not where an incumbent liberal president wants to be.

That?s why the president is trying to bring the roiling boil of political debate in the nation down to a gentle simmer. Credulous reporters have misidentified this as a move to the center, but it is really a change in message.

Obama did compromise with Republicans on extending the current tax rates, which was a substantive move and a reversal of years of rhetoric. But even the most liberal Democrats admitted that some deal was inevitable. They just wanted Obama to fight harder for the same result. And what?s the sense in that?

As Obama told Bill O?Reilly on Sunday, he?s the same guy.

Of course, how successful he is moving the debate to the mushy middle depends on whom Obama draws in a Republican opponent and what?s driving the conversation in 18 months? time.

Politics is like shooting quail. You can?t shoot at the bird. You have to shoot where you think the bird is going to be next.

What makes a politician truly gifted isn?t knowing what people want to hear ? any dumb lummox with a focus group and a campaign consultant can do that. The key is knowing what people are going to want to hear next.

With Republican voters fresh off a midterm triumph and pronouncements of conservative purity ringing through banquet halls in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, it seems certain that any nominee the 2012 GOP primary process produces will be a down-the-line conservative.

But Obama, with the help of the political press corps, will be always nudging the Republican nominee to debate the subtle shades of tax reshuffling or whether to appoint another panel on deficit reduction or how much money should be spent on high-speed rail or whether page 1,645 of the president?s health-care law should be rewritten to forbid non-reimbursable co-payments on acupuncture treatments for pets.

It will be very tempting for the Republican to go along, because not only would it produce appreciative gurgles from the Washington elite, but the other road will be very perilous. Talking about repealing Obama?s health-care law, scrapping his financial regulations and slashing spending will invite labels like ?radical? and ?extreme.?

And while every Republican who would be president yearns to be the next Ronald Reagan ? an idealist who inspires a nation ? they all fear of becoming the next Barry Goldwater ? an idealist who loses 44 states.

Chris Stirewalt is FOX News? digital politics editor. His political note, Power Play, is available every weekday morning at FOXNEWS.COM.

Source: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/politics/~3/KL1wfeEwn1U/

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