Entries for November 2006

Looks like the Republicans in the House aren't planning to play nice-nice with the Democrats after all. The emerging House Republican plan on how to address the new Democratic majority is turning toward an aggressive effort to portray Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi and her team as out of touch and liberal.

We just got an E-mail from our old pal Jeff Gulko, one of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's biggest fans. See, he set up a website to promote Richardson for president, we wrote about it, and now he's telling us about how the little squib resulted in a rush to his site. The lesson: Let Whispers know if you're going national with a website to promote your favorite 2008 candidate. We'll keep a running list. Here's Gulko's note:

The Mitt Romney hiring machine continues to plow through Washington. It's latest pick: Kevin Madden, the battle-tested spokesman for House Majority Leader John Boehner. Even if you don't know his name, you've seen his work. Of note: He was the Bush-Cheney '04 New England press coordinator, worked for the troublesome Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, jumped to Rep. Tom DeLay's operation before the Texan was sent packing and handled the Rep. Mark Foley page scandal. We hear he told Boehner last night about the new job and plans to move to Boston in two weeks, where Romney is setting up shop in the Italian North End. It could be awkward: The Irishman is a Yankees fan.

Senior administration officials are working on what one dubbed a "big, big" agenda the president plans to unveil at the start of the new year via the budget and State of the Union address.

Most of the issues have already been revealed, but what one insider said is new is just how hard the president plans to work to win passage of a minimum wage bill, broad immigration reform, reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, and entitlement reform.

Yes, it's really true: Rudy Giuliani is getting ready to run for president, expanding the crop of GOP frontrunners to three.

Fans, allies, and even a few Bushies who like New York's 9/11 mayor say he's finally picking up the pace to get to the position where he can officially announce, likely by summer. They tell us that he's been moving slowly only because he wanted to test the waters as he campaigned around the country for Republican lawmakers this year, and because, frankly, he's so popular that he can get in when ever he feels like it.

"Giuliani is for real," says a Bush adviser. But first, of course, he has to clean up his meandering ways in key GOP issues like abortion, gay rights, and guns, all of which his advisers say he can finesse. To help, he's wooing conservatives who would be willing to go public to back him. That's bad for Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who wants to be the other big to take on Sen. John McCain and who has himself been wowing Christian conservatives who would otherwise be leery of backing a Mormon.

Teen-idol-cum-aging-crooner Pat Boone comes to Washington this week for his first address to a group he has long helped fund: the conservative Heritage Foundation. Boone says it will be a welcome change of venue from his home base in Beverly Hills, where, he says, "I feel like a Don Quixote tilting at windmills." The windmills? Hollywood's entertainment studios. "They've force-fed rap music to kids," he says, "selling them the idea that if you want to be a recording artist, you have to have been to prison, worked as a pimp, and have been shot at." Boone just finished an album of R&B duets with the likes of James Brown and Smokey Robinson, but he says he steered clear of political talk during those recording sessions: "Many people say to me, 'I believe everything you say, Boone.' But the entertainment industry is overwhelmingly liberal; most artists just go with the flow."

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback says he'll announce whether or not he's seeking the White House in '08 within a month, but it sounds to us like he's in. His calculus: None of the current crop of GOP presidential candidates have strong backing from religious conservatives who make up the party's base. "There is room in the Republican primary for somebody who is unapologetic about being pro-growth, pro-limited government, pro-life, and pro-marriage," he tells us from Kansas. Current Republican presidential frontrunner JohnMcCain famously knocked the religious right in his 2000 presidential bid, while former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani–McCain's main rival for the nomination, according to polls–champions abortion rights and gay rights. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, another contender, has stepped up outreach to religious conservatives, calling on his state legislature to fight the judicial ruling that legalized gay marriage there in 2003. But until recently, Romney had a pro-abortion-rights stance. "There has been some mixed record in [Romney's] background," says Brownback.

–Dan Gilgoff

Democratic White House aspirant and outgoing Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack tells us that when he formally declares his candidacy this week, his message to the nation will be that it's time for tough love. Exhibit A: weaning the United States off foreign oil. Vilsack helped boost the Hawkeye State's ethanol production by 300 percent, making it the nation's top producer. "I realized the country was in need of somebody who would challenge it," Vilsack says, explaining his decision to run. "Somebody who is not going to tell you what you already think, but who will take you to a different place, a place we need to get to if we want a bright future for our kids."

–Dan Gilgoff

The online news outlet that swiped the Washington Post's political editor and one of its top political reporters last week says it has more thieving to announce. Fred Ryan, president of Allbritton Communications, which owns the yet-to-be-named, yet-to-be-unveiled website, says new hires will be announced this week and that ­they're just as "stellar" as former Post stars John Harris and Jim VandeHei. "Our model is to have world-class political reporters who have established their own franchises," Ryan says, vowing to build "the ultimate political reporting website." The site is part of a multiplatform news service that includes The Capitol Leader, a beltway newspaper set to begin publication in January.

–Dan Gilgoff

She hasn't said she's running yet, but that's not stopping Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's foes from trying to keep her out of the White House with a new website, www.stophernow.com. Launched this week, the site features the animated Hillary Show, with new episodes planned for when Clinton makes news. The show's first cartoon guests: Sen. John Kerry, whom the animated Clinton calls "loser," and a screaming Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean. "We knew people were tired of the mean television ads you find in every campaign," says Dick Collins, the Dallas-based moneyman who ponied up most of the $250,000 that the site launch required. "So we wanted to have some fun." But Collins says it could turn nasty as '08 nears: "You never know where you end up."

–Dan Gilgoff

Business is booming at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the government's chief mapmaker, which relies on imagery from spy satellites. Over the past year, we hear, the NGA printed 10.3 million mapsand charts and delivered 12 million images to military and intel agencies. The NGA has also been on a buying spree for commercial imagery, purchasing 126,439 gigabytes since early last year. The images show battlefields in Iraq and nuke sites in North Korea, along with hurricane damage in the Gulf and refugees in Darfur, Sudan.

–Dan Gilgoff