Massachusetts Senate Race: Money War Is On

Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images(BOSTON) -- The money war in the Massachusetts Senate race is officially on and this quarter Elizabeth Warren is the resounding victor.

The consumer advocate and Harvard Law School professor raised $3.15 million in just several weeks of campaigning. Ninety-six percent of the donations were $100 or less, according to her campaign, which said they raised the money from 11,000 donors in Massachusetts with the “vast majority” of donations coming in after she formally announced on Sept. 14, the last two weeks of the quarter.

This is more than many of the GOP presidential candidates raised this quarter.

But despite her big haul, Warren’s accounts are still dwarfed by Scott Brown’s cash on hand. The Brown campaign raised $1.55 million this quarter, less than Warren, but has $10.5 million cash on hand. The Brown campaign’s finance director released a statement pointing out they have quite the war chest they can sit on while Warren has to battle her Democratic rivals before she officially takes on Brown.

“Scott Brown had another strong fundraising quarter and he will have the resources he needs to get out his strong pro-jobs message and run against whomever emerges as the Democratic nominee,” John Cook, Brown’s finance director said in a statement.

Warren’s rise is happening at the same time the Occupy Wall Street protests are going on throughout the country. Just as the tea party movement led directly to conservatives being elected in 2010, could Warren be the first Occupy Wall Street senator? Massachusetts Democratic Party strategist Mary Anne Marsh called Warren’s fundraising numbers “impressive” and pointed out that the issues the protesters are pushing are just the ones that Warren has been working on as a consumer protection advocate and will undoubtedly help her against Brown.

The Warren campaign sent out an email to supporters hoping to raise even more money off the large haul.

“That’s why your support is more important than ever. I need you to help us build the strongest grassroots campaign we can by encouraging your friends and family to join us, too,” the email signed Elizabeth Warren read. “We are in this together. We are fighting back for the middle class families who are getting hammered here in Massachusetts and across the country. We are fighting for the future of America.”

Since the Harvard professor got in the race last month she’s already squeezed out two of her primary opponents: Newton mayor Setti Warren and most recently Democratic activist Bob Massie got out of the race.

Despite the Democratic primary not being until next September -- just two months before the general election --  it’s already getting heated between Warren and Brown, with personal insults being lobbed between the two. Last week at the Democratic debate, the candidates were asked how they paid for college. The moderator pointed out that Brown famously posed for Cosmopolitan in 1982. Warren’s response, which got laughter from the crowd: “I kept my clothes on. I borrowed money.”

When asked by a local radio station to respond to Warren’s dig, Brown replied with his own: “Thank God.”

Massachusetts Republican strategist Rob Gray says the election will be “the most expensive in Massachusetts history.”

“It’s a big splash,” Gray said, referring to Warren’s fundraising. “But, I expect the Brown people expect that they are going to have to win a race where the spending is one to one. That’s what they should expect.”

Gray added that including outside spending the money could get up to $30 million on each side, making the battle for Massachusetts a potentially $60 million race.

The liberal group Progressive Change Campaign Committee also reported Monday that they raised $407,899 for Warren’s campaign.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

‘Joe the Plumber’ to Run for Congress

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(TOLEDO, Ohio) -- Samuel Wurzelbacher, more commonly known as “Joe the Plumber,” filed candidacy papers Friday to run in Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District, The New York Times reports.

The Joe for Congress 2012 campaign follows Wurzelbacher’s brief stint in the spotlight in 2008, when he objected to then-candidate Barack Obama’s plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire for those making $250,000 or more, leading Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to repeatedly cite “Joe the Plumber” as a symbol for his argument against Obama’s economic policies.

If Wurzelbacher secures the GOP nomination, he will run against either Rep. Marcy Kaptur or Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who will face off for the Democratic nomination in a 2012 primary.

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'Dirty Harry' Foreign Policy: Comparing GOP Candidates

Steve Pope/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Republican presidential candidates have woven their war plans into their jobs plans in speeches during the past week, even as foreign policy prescriptions have taken a backseat to economic issues for most of the primary season.

From troop levels in Afghanistan to ballistic missile-defense systems, the GOP candidates have donned their commander-in-chief hats to present their plans for how they would oversee the U.S. military.

IRAN:  Herman Cain makes no secret of his qualms with Iran. If elected, the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank chairman said he would upgrade America’s missile-defense system, load those missile defenses on naval ships, strategically position the ships and then tell Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to “make my day.”

The underpinnings of Cain’s idea are echoed in those of Mitt Romney, who also wants to increase naval and missile-defense spending. Romney said that if elected, he would “reverse the hollowing of our Navy” by increasing the number of Navy ships built each year from nine to 15.

“God did not create this country to be a nation of followers,” Romney said in a speech at South Carolina’s military college The Citadel on Friday. “America must lead the world, or someone else will.”

Jon Huntsman too would focus on Iran as an example of when U.S. force might be necessary.

“I cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran,” Huntsman said in New Hampshire Monday. “If you want an example of when I would use American force, it would be that.”

AFGHANISTAN:  Huntsman and Texas Gov. Rick Perry would accelerate the departure of troops from Afghanistan, while Romney would “order a full review” of troop levels and make a decision “free from politics.”

Huntsman said his military expenditures would be counter-terrorism based.

“Simply advocating more ships, more troops, and more weapons is not a viable path forward,” Huntsman said, making an obvious reference to Romney’s plan to build more Navy ships. “We need more agility, more intelligence and more economic engagement with the world.”

Texas Rep. Ron Paul would bring the troops home -- all of them. He said Saturday that war is “one of the greatest threats to the family.” Instead of the United Nations or NATO being the “proper authority” for going to war, Paul said the United States should look to the golden rule.

“I would like to suggest that possibly we should be thinking about having a foreign policy of the golden rule and not treat other countries any way other than the way we want to be treated,” he said.

But Perry said he is “not going to compromise when it comes to our national security.” And the first step in making America secure is securing the border, he said, a task that might include taking on Mexico.

“Make no mistake about it, what we are seeing south of our border is nothing short of a war being waged by these narcoterrorists,” Perry said at a social conservatives conference Friday. “To face this threat, we shouldn’t take any options off the table, including security operations in cooperation with the Mexican government as we did with Colombia some years ago.”

And as for threats in the Middle East, Perry would call Pakistan at 3 a.m. to build better relationships, he said in a rambling response to a question at the Florida debate.

And speaking of that 3 a.m. phone call,  Rick Santorum vowed to be “up and waiting” before the phone even rings.

“When that phone call comes at three in the morning, ladies and gentlemen, I will be up and waiting for the call because I will know what is going on in the world around us and they won’t have to get me out of bed,” Santorum said.

ISRAEL:  Except for Paul, the GOP candidates have unanimously criticized President Obama for not emphatically supporting Israel and expressed robust support for America’s Middle East ally.

“If you mess with Israel, you are messing with the United States of America,” Cain said Friday.

Under the “Cain Philosophy,” America must “clarify” which countries are “friends” and which are “enemies.”

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Reagan-Era Officials Seek Nuclear Free World

SGranitz/WireImage(SIMI VALLEY, Calif.) -- Using the 25th anniversary of the historic Reykjavik Summit where Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev almost reached an agreement to completely eliminate their nation’s nuclear weapons stockpiles, a global disarmament group is launching a campaign to begin multilateral talks that would do away with all of the world’s nuclear weapons by 2030.

Beginning Tuesday, Global Zero, an arms control group, is hosting a commemoration of the Reykjavik Summit at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.  The event will include a gathering of one hundred prominent political, military and business leaders -- including former secretaries of state George Shultz and James Baker -- who will call for the first multilateral arms talks aimed at full nuclear disarmament.     

On Oct. 12, 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev emerged from a white frame house on the outskirts of Iceland’s capital looking glum after the collapse of talks that had come tantalizingly close to reaching an agreement that would have done away with each country’s nuclear stockpile within a decade.

In the years since the Reykjavik Summit the United States and Russia have significantly reduced their nuclear weapons inventories through subsequent nuclear arms reduction agreements. However, nuclear weapons proliferation has increased as well, as India, Pakistan and North Korea have joined the nuclear weapons club.

Matt Brown and Bruce Blair, the co-founders of Global Zero, believe a new round of U.S. and Russian nuclear disarmament talks could jump-start a process that could lead other nuclear weapons countries to agree to the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons by 2030.

"Our approach, our belief, is that the U.S. and Russia clearly need to lead. We still have 90 percent of the world’s weapons,” Blair told ABC News. He and Brown believe both countries should initially reduce their stockpiles to 1,000 weapons each, a level which might trigger China to join arms reduction talks.  

After that they envision a “critical mass” of the rest of the world’s nuclear weapons powers like India, the United Kingdom and France joining the process -- in effect creating a “domino effect” that would create international pressure for any remaining “outliers” to get involved in the process.        

Both Brown and Blair believe that reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles to zero would lead to the first universal verification programs which would only increase the international resolve in preventing countries like Iran and North Korea from pressing forward with nuclear weapons programs. "We can never get on that path unless we bring all parties to the table.”

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Issa Claim on Energy Company In District Contradicted by Letter to Department of Energy

The Office of Congressman Darrell Issa(WASHINGTON) -- On Fox News Sunday, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chair of the House Investigations Committee pushing for more information from the Obama administration about the $535 million loan guarantee to benefit Solyndra, was asked about a company in his district applying for a loan for which he advocated.

“You say government shouldn’t play venture capitalist. It shouldn’t be picking winners and losers,” said Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace. “But it turns out that you sent several letters over the last couple of years to the federal Energy Department asking for federal loan guarantees for clean energy companies in your state. Didn’t you do the same thing that you are accusing them of doing?”

Issa disputed the charge, saying, “the request was: they have a loan application and would you please give them a yes or no -- and that’s a big difference.”

But the first sentence of Issa’s Jan. 14, 2010 letter to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu reads: “I write to express my support of Aptera Motors; application for a loan under the Department of Energy’s 136 Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentive Program (ATVMIP).”

Far from merely asking the Energy Department to make a decision, Issa advocated for the company, writing that “electric vehicle initiatives like Aptera’s will aid U.S. long-term energy goals by shifting away from fossil fuels and using viable renewable energy sources like plug-in electric energy.”

A spokesman for Issa did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

George W. Bush: Iraq, Afghanistan Wars ‘Worth Fighting’

ABC News(DALLAS) -- To the 30 percent of veterans who in a recent Pew Research Center poll said that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t worth fighting, former President George W. Bush has this to say: "I hope history proves them wrong.”

“The only way for there to be peace is for free societies to emerge.  And, you know, history takes a while to unfold,” he told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff in an exclusive interview over the weekend.  “I happen to think it was worth fighting. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have put them into combat.”

The veterans with whom he has met have all indicated that they were “proud to serve,” he told Woodruff during an interview in which the 65-year-old two-term president talked about his efforts to aid wounded veterans through the George W. Bush Institute.

The interview took place ahead of the Bush Institute’s Warrior Open, a golf tournament in suburban Dallas for military service members who were severely injured while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The tournament will take place on Monday and Tuesday.

In the wide-ranging interview, Woodruff asked Bush about a number of issues, including the topics making headlines in the race to select the next GOP presidential candidate.  Bush declined to answer.

“I’m not going to opine on the subjects of politics,” he said.

Four organizations that supported the recovery and rehabilitation of 2011 Warrior Open competitors and their families will be honored during the golfing event.  The organizations are Hope For The Warriors, Salute Military Golf Association, Semper Fi Fund and Troops First Foundation.

“I love these guys, love the women in service,” Bush said.  “And to the extent that I can help them, I will.  To the extent that I can herald their courage, I will.”

The Warrior Open is the second of two events of the Bush Center’s Military Service Initiative emphasizing the importance of sports -- such as mountain biking and golf -- for rehabilitating many of those seriously injured on the front lines.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Rick Perry Punches Back, Releases New Ad Attacking Romney

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images(MANCHESTER, N.H.) -- Will New Hampshire make Rick Perry the comeback kid?

The Texas governor, whose rapid rise to front-runner status proved fleeting, arrives in this key early primary state this week in the hopes of recapturing some of his early momentum.  And his campaign is already on offense against rival Mitt Romney, who according to a recent poll, is still the favorite candidate in the Granite State.

On Monday, the Perry campaign is unveiling a new ad that hammers Romney on health care and flip-flopping, ABC’s Jonathan Karl reports.  Karl notes that it’s the harshest and best-produced attack ad of the 2012 campaign so far.

The ad opens by calling Obamacare, “America’s most damaging prescription” and then substitutes “Romneycare” for “Obamacare.”  It closes with Romney’s own line from the last debate -- one that the former Massachusetts governor will undoubtedly hear over and over again: "There are plenty of reasons not to vote for me."

[Click here to watch Rick Perry's new ad]

While Perry goes for Romney’s jugular in the new spot, on the campaign trail he’s finally figured out a more effective way to explain his views on immigration policy.

“Are we going to create a class of tax wasters or are we going to create taxpayers?” Perry asked at a campaign event this weekend in Iowa.

Perry characterized his decision to provide illegal immigrants with access to in-state tuition in Texas as one based on economics more than compassion.

“The issue was really driven by economics because of the federal government’s, again, failure to secure that border and us having to deal with it,” Perry told a crowd in Spencer, Iowa on Saturday.

But Perry faces a crucial test this week: After previous stumbles, Tuesday night’s Bloomberg News-Washington Post debate at Dartmouth College is likely to be a pivotal moment.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Jon Huntsman to Unveil Foreign Policy Plan in New Hampshire

LIU JIN/AFP/Getty Images(MANCHESTER, N.H.) -- Jon Huntsman will unveil his foreign policy plan at Southern New Hampshire University on Monday which will focus on a combination of trade expansion, adjustments to defense infrastructure, and “a more judicious approach” toward international conflict.

Monday morning’s speech will also highlight tax and regulatory reform proposals from Huntsman’s jobs plan in an effort to “rebuild America’s core.”

“We will establish a foreign policy doctrine that reflects our modern world,” Huntsman is expected to say, according to prepared remarks released by the campaign.  “Simply advocating more ships, more troops, and more weapons is not a viable path forward.  We need more agility, more intelligence, and more economic engagement with the world.”

Huntsman will propose the passing of trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, which he says “could boost American exports by more than $10 billion and create tens of thousands of American jobs.”

Additionally, he will push to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he says “will open markets in Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.”  Huntsman will also call for trade agreements with Japan and Taiwan to take advantage of “the unstoppable tide of economic advancement.”

The former governor will then shift to the United States’ current foreign entanglements, calling for a drastic reduction of troops in Afghanistan while still leaving “an adequate number of counter-terrorist and intelligence functions and a facile special forces presence.”

“Simply put, we are risking American blood and treasure in parts of the world where our strategy needs to be rethought,” he is expected to say.  “Afghanistan was once the center of the terrorist threat to America.  That is no longer the case.  After 6,000 lives lost and more than $1 trillion spent, it is time to bring our brave troops home. ”

Though Huntsman will propose a diminished presence in Afghanistan, he believes American resources can still be directed towards other key areas in the Middle East, suggesting that we stand “shoulder to shoulder with Israel as they manage a host of new challenges brought on by the Arab Spring.”   He will also pinpoint Iran as an area of concern.

“I cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran.  If you want an example of when I would use American force, it would be that,” he will say.

Huntsman will suggest redirecting military expenditures towards counter-terrorism efforts.

“We must be prepared to respond to threats -- from al Qaeda and other terrorist cells -- that emanate from a much more diverse geography, including Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Pakistan and the Asia-Pacific,” he will say.

He will conclude his speech by highlighting his own foreign policy experience as ambassador to both China and Singapore.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Obama to Spend Columbus Day Visiting Wounded Troops

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- President Obama, who spent the weekend at Camp David, will spend the afternoon with wounded service members at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland.

The visit comes one week after the United States marked the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. In a statement last week, the president stressed how his administration is ending the war “responsibly” and from “a position of strength.”

“As we reflect on 10 years of war and look ahead to a future of peace, Michelle and I call upon all Americans to show our gratitude and support for our fellow citizens who risk their lives so that we can enjoy the blessings of freedom and security,” Obama said, a message he will likely share with troops Monday.
 
Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

GOP Candidates Tune Out Mormon Attack

James Devaney/WireImage(WASHINGTON) -- Aiming to keep the economy at center stage in the race for 2012′s Republican presidential nominee, several GOP contenders today downplayed a leading evangelical Christian’s dismissal of Mormonism as a cult and GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, a practicing Mormon, as a non-Christian.

“To make this a big issue is just ridiculous right now because every day I’m out on the street talking to people, this is not what people are talking about,” Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

As Bachmann declined to answer whether she considers former Massachusetts Gov. Romney a Christian, White House hopefuls Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich also tried to drive the debate away from religion. “None of us should sit in judgment on someone else’s religion,” former House Speaker Gingrich said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Rev. Robert Jeffress comments, Gingrich added, had “no place” in the campaign.

“I believe that they believe they are Christians," Cain said.

Cain, running in second place behind Romney, according to national polls, also said he was “not running for theologian in chief” during separate appearances on CNN and CBS.

Jeffress, pastor of Dallas’ First Baptist Church, lambasted Mormonism and Romney to reporters Friday after introducing Texas Gov. Rick Perry to an audience of the Value Voters Summit in Washington. Romney, Jeffress said, ”is a good moral man, but those of us who are born-again followers of Christ should prefer a competent Christian.”

Perry, who has been falling farther behind in the polls, said his own views diverged from Jeffress’. “I don’t think the Mormon Church is a cult,” Perry told the Des Moines Register over the weekend, adding that he welcomed political endorsements, even if he disagreed with some of the endorsers’ public statements.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio