Worst 2012 Election Predictions, Michelle Obama’s Political Future, and More

There Will Be Consequences:

John Boehner is ready to keep members of his own party in line. The House speaker is threatening to strip dissidents of their committee assignments if they don’t vote with party leadership. Four Republicans reportedly lost their assignments this week. (Read more)

Another Obama Candidacy? If Michelle Obama wants to pull a Hillary Clinton and run for Senate when her husband is termed out of the White House, she has a good shot at getting elected in her home state of Illinois. A new Public Policy Polling survey shows the first lady defeating Sen. Mark Kirk in a hypothetical 2016 matchup, 51 to 40 percent. (Read more)

Sununu Unhinged: Mitt Romney surrogate John Sununu thinks the reason President Obama won the 2012 election is because of voters who are dependent on the government. Sununu said during a recent forum: “They aggressively got out the base of their base, the base of their base that’s dependent, to a great extent economically, on government policy and government programs.” Sununu appears to be on the campaign message still (even as there is no campaign anymore), since what he said was in line with the comment Romney made after the election about Obama winning because he gave his supporters “gifts.” (Read more)

Worst Predictions: Pundit Tracker has narrowed down all the bad election predictions (and there were some pretty bad ones out there) to the top three. Not surprisingly, Dick Morris, who predicted Mitt Romney would defeat Barack Obama in a landslide and also that the president would pull out of the race, made the list twice. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews made the list for forecasting that Michele Bachmann would win the Republican presidential nomination. (Read more)

Wedded to the Idea: More good news for same-sex marriage proponents: A new Gallup poll shows a majority of Americans—53 percent—approve of the rights of gay couples to wed. That ties an all-time high from a poll taken in mid-2011 on the issue. (Read more)

Lieberman’s Lament: Outgoing Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., says that although he’s not sorry he supported Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, he does regret being so negative about Barack Obama during his speech at the Republican National Convention. “It wasn’t necessary to what I was doing at the convention, which was to affirmatively support my friend,” Lieberman said. (Read more)

Video of the Day: Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker started his weeklong challenge to live off food stamps Tuesday. Here’s the mayor on how he made it through his first day. (Hint: It was harder than he thought it would be.)