The New Republic

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Don't get me wrong, I see the appeal of nailing down George HW Bush's endorsement. It signals to the GOP establishment and the media that the nomination is effectively over, probably helps Romney raise some money, and maybe gets a few more fence-sitting Republican elites on board. Still, I'm not entirely sure that outweighs the negatives in Romney's case. After all, Romney is doing fine in the GHW Bush wing of the Republican Party. Where he's struggling is the portion of the party that sees Bush as a sellout, and which worries Romney is made of similar stuff.  READ MORE >>

Reid Cherlin, a former Obama White House spokesman whose portfolio included health care, had an interesting post up at GQ.com yesterday about why the Affordable Care Act is so damn hard to sell. The gist: READ MORE >>

After reading this Rolling Stone piece about Dartmouth (via Felix Salmon), I now see why the school's president, Jim Yong Kim, who Obama just tapped to head the World Bank, made such a good impression on Tim Geithner: They have very similar views on cultural humility--by which I mean how much READ MORE >>

Matt Bai’s long-awaited, 10,000-word opus on the rise and fall of last summer’s deficit grand-bargain is finally out and very much worth a read. Bai adds a lot of new detail affirming what we thought we knew—which is that Obama was ready to do a deal and Boehner wasn’t—but which got much hazier in recent weeks amid Team Boehner’s furious spin.  READ MORE >>

Bloomberg has an absolutely terrific piece of reporting out today about how the big banks have mobilized to water down the Volcker Rule—the reform measure designed to prevent federally-backed banks from placing bets for their own bottom line. Here’s the gist: READ MORE >>

Over at The Washington Post, Jonathan Bernstein argues that the Jim Yong Kim nomination for World Bank president is (for liberals at least) a pleasant byproduct of having a Democratic president: READ MORE >>

Lots of people can (and will) tell you about the views of Jim Yong Kim, the administration's nominee to be World Bank president, on fighting poverty and improving global health over the next few days. But the Wall Street Journal has unearthed what's sure to be the most compelling character testimonial you're going to find (fast forward till about two minutes in to get to the good stuff):  READ MORE >>

On Sunday, The Washington Post published a long, blow-by-blow of last summer’s negotiations between Barack Obama and John Boehner over a $4 trillion deficit deal. The take-away from the piece is that Obama had a chance at a deal involving $800 billion in tax increases and trillions in spending cuts (including cuts to sacred programs like Medicare and Social Security), but that he got cold feet and backed away. READ MORE >>

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