Clinton Rejects VP Rumors

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flatly rejected rumors that she could someday step in as Vice President during a television interview Thursday morning.

“I do not think it’s even in the realm of possibility,” Clinton said in an interview on MSNBC’s Today. “It’s not a serious issue in the administration.”

The former First Lady and Senator noted that she believes Vice President Joe Biden has “done an amazingly good job.”

Speculation that Clinton, a Presidential candidate in 2008, could at some point assume the Vice Presidency has swirled since the early days of the Obama administration. The White House has repeatedly denied the rumors and Clinton said that nobody within the administration has even brought the subject up.

In a Bloomberg National Poll released last month, Hillary Clinton was found to be the country’s most popular politician, with two-thirds expressing a favorable view of the Secretary of state and one-third saying that the U.S. would have been better off if Clinton had been elected President.

Clinton has previously said that she will leave her position at the State Department if the President wins a second term.

Obama Raises Over $70 Million In Third Quarter

President Barack Obama and the DNC raised over $70 million for the President’s reelection campaign in the third fundraising quarter, according to the Obama campaign.

“It all happened during a summer when the President was focused on doing the job he was elected to do — a summer when we had to cancel a series of fundraising events and ask everyone to dig a little deeper,” Obama campaign Manager Jim Messina said in a statement released Thursday morning.

The 2012 campaign reports that the July-September donations came via 606,027 individuals that made 766,000 donations, 98 percent of which were $250 or less. To date, Messina notes, 982,967 individuals have contributed.

The numbers exceed the campaign’s initial third quarter goal of $55 million. In the first quarter the President raised $47 million followed by a record setting $86 million in the second quarter.

According to various media reports, Mitt Romney, who has led the GOP field in total fundraising, is expected to announce approximately $14 million in third quarter contributions.

Cain Hopes To Continue Climb In New Hampshire

HANOVER, NH — Look for GOP heavyweights Mitt Romney and Rick Perry to share more of the spotlight with upstart Herman Cain during tonight’s Republican presidential debate.

After an impressive past four weeks in which he has leapfrogged Perry and drawn close to Romney in the polls, Cain is finally being viewed as a serious contender by the national media.

Moreover, voters in key states are beginning to take notice, as well. Cain finished first in a South Carolina poll released this morning and tied Romney in a new Virginia poll also put out today.

The question now becomes, can Cain continue his climb upwards?

This evening’s Bloomberg/Washington Post debate on the campus of Dartmouth College should provide Cain with his first real challenge as a top-tiered candidate.

The candidates will all be asked to focus on economic issues during the roughly two-hour long debate. Cain’s “9-9-9” tax reform plan and his message of de-regulation has proven popular with fiscal conservatives, but now that he’s polling at or near the top of the field, will his Republican opponents spend more time trying to poke holes in his plans?

Despite his remarkable turnaround this past month, the conventional thinking is that Cain still has a lot to gain with GOP voters. His reputation as an outsider may have endeared him to Tea Party conservatives desperate to find an alternative to the establishment’s choice (Romney) and the darling of the faith-based bloc (Perry). But some in the GOP ranks say that his lack of experience in governing hurts him, and that his economic proposals, while lofty, are unrealistic.

New Hampshire, a state that figures to favor Romney, who formerly served as Governor of Massachusetts, could prove to be a difficult challenge for Cain. Though he took home 20 percent of the vote in a new poll released here yesterday, it’s possible that Cain’s surge in the Granite State may be short-lived, much like Rudy Giuliani in 2007.

Due to all of this, and the fact that there are less than three months until the New Hampshire primary, Cain’s performance in tonight’s debate will be critical to his hopes of pulling the mother of all upsets and winning the Republican primary.

Follow Geoff Holtzman’s coverage of tonight’s GOP debate on Twitter.

Poll: Romney, Cain Nearly Tied

According to a new Gallup poll, CEO Herman Cain’s surge in popularity has put the former Godfather’s pizza CEO only two points behind former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the frontrunner in the GOP primary race.

Romney continues to lead the field with 20 percent, a 4 percent decrease from the previous month, while Cain comes in at 18 percent, a sharp 13 percent rise from September.

Gallup notes that despite holding the lead, the two frontrunners have garnered considerably less support than previous Republican nominees at this point in the election cycle, a factor that means the race may still see some significant shakeups.

Texas Governor Rick Perry comes in third with 15 percent, a sharp 16 percent decrease from the previous month. No other candidate reaches double digits.

The poll was conducted between October 3rd and 7th among 1,064 Republicans and Republican leaning independents.

Mr. "9-9-9" Wants America To Shine

Herman Cain says he’s running for President to restore America’s status in the world, which, in his mind, has taken a hit during President Obama’s time in office.

Speaking Friday to a large audience of social conservatives at the annual Values Voter Summit in downtown DC, Cain asked voters to help “push that shining city on a hill back to the top of the hill where it belongs.”

Cain began his speech by acknowledging his recent resurgence in the polls.

“When you run for President, and you move into the top tier, you get this bulls-eye on your back, and people take pot-shots left and right.”

People, Cain added, “are afraid that this “long-shot” may not be a long-shot any longer.”

Cain opined on his humble upbringing in Georgia, but told the audience that he bears no ill-will towards America for the fact that he had to defy socio-economic deficiencies to earn a pair of college degrees and become a successful entrepreneur and businessman.

“I have achieved all of my American dreams, and then some!” he boasted.

Cain later pivoted to policy, which allowed him to promote his now well-known “9-9-9” plan to overhaul the federal tax system. Replacing the current code with a nine percent sales tax, a nine percent corporate tax and a nine percent personal income tax would create jobs and provide economic certainty to businesses, he argued.

Cain then called for “altering” and repealing President Obama’s healthcare reform law, as well as the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. He accused Obama of shoving burdensome regulations “down the throats” of U.S. businesses, and argued that instead of beefing up oversight of Wall Street, the federal government should turn its attention to federal mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Addressing the ongoing anti-Wall Street demonstrations in New York and elsewhere around the country, Cain called the protestors “anti-capitalism” and “anti-free market.”

“Wall Street didn’t write these failed economic policies, the White House did!” Cain exclaimed.

On foreign policy, Cain embraced GOP icon Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” philosophy, adding that he’d take it a step further. As President, he said, he’d invest in more war ships and would tell Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahamadinejad to “make my day.”

On abortion, an issue so important to those in attendance, Cain said that he believes life starts at conception, “no exceptions, period.”

He also argued that marriage should be defined as being between one man and one woman. Cain added that contrary to the current administration, which decided earlier this year to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act from legal challenges, he’d instruct his Attorney General to enforce DOMA.