Race

Mark Sanford, former governor of South Carolina, has cleared the first hurdle in his comeback campaign. He will be in a runoff to determine the Republican candidate for a vacant House seat. He got some 37 percent of the primary vote. Which would have seemed an utterly improbable back in 2009, when he delivered a tearful apology for deceiving his wife about an affair and voters about his whereabouts.

In 1997, Chuck Hagel had effusive praise for Strom Thurmond. Here's the video and transcript, via the Washington Free Beacon:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

On a hot mic, reporter David Chalian of Yahoo News said that Ann and Mitt Romney are "happy to have a party with black people drowning." Here's audio:

The comments were made during an ABC/Yahoo livestream, when the reporters believed that microphones were off.

On TV this morning, Chris Matthews accused RNC chairman Reince Priebus and Republicans of playing the race card, causing clear discomfort on the set of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

Barack Obama's reelection campaign has seized on this blind quotation in today's edition of the British newspaper the Telegraph: 

Give the media enough time, and they will spin straw into gold – for Democrats, naturally. And so it has been over the last two weeks since the Obamacare ruling was handed down.

“Senator Santorum is at the desperate end of his campaign,” Mitt Romney told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. Oops. For weeks, Team Romney and many of its allies have been eager—one might even say desperate—to end this campaign. The Republican primary electorate has been resisting this, and the voters in Alabama and Mississippi engaged in massive resistance yesterday, giving Romney less than a third of their votes.

Associated Press: "Obama Tells Blacks to 'Stop Complainin' and Fight"

ABC News: "‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protests Turn Violent; Video Shows Police Macing Women"

Philo Klein: "Is Obama's 'specific' plan now just an outline?"

The Hill: "Romney: Give US the Lockerbie bomber"

Nate Silver: "There’s Room for More G.O.P. Candidates"

TWS: Wisconsin Republicans beat back Big Labor in recall elections.

New York Times: A terrifying window into Tom Friedman's imagination

Politico: "Harry Reid super committee picks in place"

Last night the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to censure Representative Charlie Rangel (D-NY), 333-79. Only two Republicans (Peter King of New York and Don Young of Alaska) voted against the censure resolution, but Democrats were more evenly divided, with 170 supporting the resolution and 77 opposed. Interestingly, the divide among Democrats appears to be related to race.