Daily Political Wire 1-3-2011

George Wenschhof

Sunday morning "Talking Heads" Highlights - below, CNN has a quick recap.



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Majority of RNC Members Oppose Steele - the embattled chair of the Republican National Committee has 88 of the 168 members of the committee saying they will not vote for him. These numbers from a survey taken by Politico.com. You can read more here.

Today, Americans for Tax Reform will host a debate between the candidates for the chair of the RNC. It begins at 1:00 PM and you can watch it here.

While, it looks bad for Michael Steele to continue, do not count him out, as he won after six rounds of balloting two years ago.

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Mooney in Good Position to Run for Congress - the new chair of the Maryland Republican Party has put himself in a great position to run for Congress. Republican Roscoe Bartlett, who represents the 6th district in Maryland, is 84 and is likely to retire during the four year term held by Alex Mooney.

Mooney was defeated last November by Democrat Ron Young, for the Maryland district 3 state senate seat. Mooney will continue to keep a high profile and maintain his financial support during his four year term as chair of the Maryland Republican Party. He will be well positioned to run for congress in either the 2012 or 2014 election. The Washington Post has more here.

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Raising the Debt Ceiling will be one of the first battles of the Incoming Congress - Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) wants this to be their line in the sand and to say no more. White House Economic Adviser Austin Goolsbee says it would be a financial disaster if the debt ceiling was not raised. TheHill.com has more here. Stay tuned...

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Change in Filibuster Rule Coming? - after watching the unprecedented use of the filibuster by Senate Republicans during the first two years of the Obama administration, Democrats are scheming for changes. Unfortunately, 67 votes are needed to change Senate rules, unless rule changes are brought up at the time the new Senate convenes, before the new composition of officers has been established. Vice President Joe Biden would be in charge at that moment and some Democrats want to reduce the number from 60 votes needed at that time. The last time a change was made was in 1975 when the required number of votes needed for a filibuster was reduced from 67 to 60. The New Yorker has more here.

The attempted change to reduce the number of votes needed when Biden was in charge would be a simple majority is not likely to succeed as that is too radical a move. However, look to see changes made to require Senators to actually filibuster. For political junkies, here is a quick historical time line to changes made to the filibuster rule.

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