Gingrich addresses Republican Jewish Coalition; reaffirms commitment to campaign
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on June 13th, 2011 4:35 am by HL
Gingrich addresses Republican Jewish Coalition; reaffirms commitment to campaign
LOS ANGELES — Newt Gingrich reaffirmed his commitment to a troubled pursuit of the GOP presidential nomination, after senior members of his campaign staff resigned en masse. In an address to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Beverly Hills on Sunday night, he tried to rally his supporters with a message of “we will prevail,” he said.
Last week, his staff confronted the former House speaker and anti-Obama firebrand about whether he was dedicated to the lesser tasks of running for office, given a recent vacation he took only weeks after announcing his candidacy.
Jon Huntsman campaign errs on fundraising claim
Republican Jon Huntsman has not declared his candidacy yet, but his nascent presidential campaign-in-waiting felt some growing pain Sunday after mistakenly announcing the support of a prominent Republican fundraiser.
Two senior officials in the political operation told The Washington Post that FedEx founder Frederick W. Smith had agreed last week to support Huntsman if the former Utah governor ran for president. The Post reported the news in a story about Huntsman published on Sunday.
But at about noon Sunday, a FedEx executive speaking on behalf of Smith said that Smith had not signed up with Huntsman.
Longtime keeper of Hillary Clinton’s image has forged a loyal badge of his own
Philippe Reines looked right at home.
At one end of a wood-paneled hallway in the executive suites of the State Department, Katie Couric frantically prepared for her final “CBS Evening News” interview with Reines’s boss, Hillary Rodham Clinton. At the other end, the secretary of state arrived with confidant Huma Abedin. Reines strolled over and joined the pair, shielding Clinton as she stretched her arms to decompress.
The contraction of Clinton’s inner circle over the past decade has magnified the role of Reines, the longest-serving protector of her image. The self-promoting 41-year-old bachelor and the press-scarred senior stateswoman share a bond forged by political civil wars, distrust of the media and an absolute reliance on allegiance. Reines (pronounced RYE-ness), a master practitioner of self-preservation and the beneficiary of Clinton’s almost maternal protection, is Hillaryland’s ultimate survivor.
Administration bid to cut pediatrician training draws fire
The Obama administration’s bid to slash funding for training pediatricians at children’s hospitals is provoking intense protests from medical educators and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Earlier this year, the administration, as part of its 2012 budget, proposed terminating a program that provides more than $300 million a year to the 56 free-standing children’s hospitals around the country, which train 40 percent of the nation’s pediatricians and 43 percent of pediatric sub- specialists. In addition, it cut $48 million from the program this month as part of the overall spending reductions for the current year that were in the budget agreement reached with Congress.
Texas Gov. Perry thrashes Obama on abortion, stem cells, while looking to possible 2012 run
LOS ANGELES — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, accused the Obama administration on Sunday of transforming abortion into a U.S. export and breaking faith with the nation’s founding principles by supporting taxpayer-funded embryonic stem cell research.
The conservative Republican has long been at odds with President Barack Obama’s stand on reproductive rights and stem cell research, but his remarks at an anti-abortion rally amounted to a political introduction to a mostly Hispanic crowd of about 5,000 at a downtown arena.
