The gag is that the undercover tricksters just come in and grab handfuls of voter registration forms (20 in one case), and then register the two famous quarterbacks to vote. Time and time again, they ask if any kind of ID is required to register Tebow and Brady to vote. The dialogue is peppered with funny references to the reasons Tebow and Brady can’t get the forms themselves — Tebow was in a car accident recently, while Brady happened to be assaulted in Minnesota and is going through a lot of depression. None of the middle-aged women catch the references.

It’s all very amusing, but as O’Keefe well knows, underneath the humor there is a very serious problem here. Any time human beings can commit fraud, human beings WILL commit fraud. Period. If you don’t agree with this statement, you are hopelessly naive and I have no interest in talking to you. What’s more, the easier you make the fraud, and the tougher it is to catch and punish, the more you will get. Again, this is beyond rational dispute.

When combined with Project Veritas’s last video, which showed undercover cameramen voting using the names of dead people, the holes in our system are clear. Any fraudster need only go to a polling station, grab dozens of absentee ballots, turn them in with no verification of identity, and they are registered. Then, anyone can vote absentee by claiming they are sick — or, as in the previous video, they can simply go to the polling place and place their vote there. (Mediaite claims that there are checks that would prevent this. But the “no voter ID” crowd probably wants to remove those checks as well.)

If this can happen, it does happen. I know people who want to avoid any and all checks on voter fraud are fond of telling us that voter fraud is rare. They point to the relatively small number of convictions for voter fraud as their proof.

Bollocks. By that logic, Wall Street didn’t deceive anyone. There have been hardly any criminal convictions coming out of the subprime mortgage debacle. I guess nobody committed any fraud then.

If you care about election integrity, you should care about ensuring that there are checks on rampant fraud. Unfortunately, so many who claim to favor election integrity are really only interested in favoring their own side.

That’s why the certain reaction of the fringe left to this video will be to, once again, strain to find ways that O’Keefe is breaking the law. Don’t counter his message; attack the messenger. Smear him. Claim he committed crimes whether he did or not. Go after the man on a personal level. This is what the scumbags on the fringe left always do, and you can bet they will do it again with this video.

Kudos to O’Keefe’s crew. This is an important video that should be distributed far and wide.

Steinberg, who also was a math teacher at LBJ, gave the pill to a 16-year-old student who was crying in her class about Jan. 26 because she had unprotected sex with her boyfriend, [an arrest] affidavit said.

. . . .

The student did not have a prescription for the medication, which is required for females younger than 17, the affidavit said.

The student and her boyfriend then gave Steinberg money for the medication, the affidavit said.

. . . .

Later, the student texted Steinberg and said she was nauseous, light-headed and experiencing back pain, the affidavit said. The student also said she was frightened, the affidavit said.

Steinberg texted back “this was normal, and to take a hot shower and relax,” the affidavit said.

Dr. Steinberg — oh, I mean NON-Dr. Steinberg — has learned her lesson:

Steinberg “expressed anger at (the student), blaming her for getting in trouble,” the affidavit said.

Or not.

Steinberg has been charged with a felony. I say: good. Will abortion advocates agree with me?

Somehow I doubt it. I am thinking this is going to be one of those instances where abortion advocates support an action they would never support in any other context. Normally, rational people say that you don’t give a child prescription medication that could have serious side effects unless you’re a doctor. But abortion advocates will no doubt see this as different: a horrible situation caused by a draconian law, blah blah blah.

The same thing happens with informed consent laws. Want to make a doctor tell his patients what the gall bladder surgery really entails? What the potential risks are? What the patient is truly about to undergo? Excellent. Want to make sure abortion doctors do the same? OH MY GOD YOU CAN’T DO THAT IT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL YOU ARE A TROGLODYTE. Is the response.

It’s OK if you’re supporting abortion.

So. Let’s wait and watch to see if this becomes a big story. And if it does, how the pro-abortion crowd (yes, I said it) responds. A new right to have your child’s teacher become a doctor dispensing potentially harmful medication? I bet they’re for it.

RELATED: Or perhaps they are just counting on the Obama administration’s mandate that healthcare plans provide the morning after pill — a requirement that could force religiously-affiliated hospitals to provide medication that they consider to be immoral.

My general impulse is throw cold water on momentary buzz, so this bit of hype from Camp Santorum reported by Byron York after sweeping Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado caught my attention:

After the returns came in, I asked Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley what he thought about Rich Beeson’s message.  Sure, Santorum did well on Tuesday, but doesn’t Romney have the money and infrastructure to outdistance Santorum, and everyone else, in the long run?

“What an inspiring message,” Gidley said sarcastically.  “That is really inspiring.  I can’t wait to put a bumper sticker on my truck that says MONEY-INFRASTRUCTURE 2012.”

“No one had more money and infrastructure than Hillary Clinton, and hope and change wiped her off the map,” Gidley continued.  “We’ll have money, and we’ll have infrastructure, but our nominee has to have a message that people can get behind and inspires people.”

In fact, Obama raised more money than Clinton headed into the Iowa caucuses.  Obama’s endorsements in early states were competitive with hers.  And Obama out-organized Hillary.  It’s too bad for Rick Santorum that his staff apparently does not know this, as there’s an important lesson for them in it.

Obama was able to wage a long campaign against Clinton in 2008 because he followed (and improved on) McGovern’s 1972 strategy of picking up cheap delegates in caucus states, particularly “red states,” which his rivals ignored.  Santorum’s wins in bluish-purple caucuses — Iowa, Minnesota and Colorado – and his plans to target Washington state’s caucus in the upcoming rounds suggest a general awareness of Obama’s strategy.  The RNC, having noticed that the Dems’ long 2008 campaign drove registration and organization in more states, helped open the door to an insurgent campaign by dictating proportional allocation of delegates for primaries and caucuses held before April, although some of these early non-binding contests awarding delegates later complicate these calculations.  The RNC’s plan did not anticipate this cycle’s unexciting and inept field of candidates.  In any event, it also ultimately works against a NotRomney like Santorum.

In March, with its treasure trove of delegates, there are plenty of places a NotRomney could do well, including caucuses.  Many of these states lean conservative and evangelical.  But proportional allocation of delegates insures Romney will get a share of delegates in most of these contests.  Moreover, if Newt Gingrich remains in on Super Tuesday, he may do well in Georgia (one of the biggest delegate counts that day) and other southern states, splitting the NotRomney vote.  Indeed, Newt has already headed to Ohio, another state where Romney would benefit from a split vote on Super Tuesday (Ohio moved the GOP primary from June back to March.  Given the likely Santorumentum from last night’s sweep, I wonder whether the Mitt-backed superPAC will dial back its attacks on Newt in Ohio.)  Moreover, Ron Paul is openly pursuing the McGovern/Obama cheap delegate strategy in caucus states, which complicates efforts by other NotRomneys hoping to do the same.  Furthermore, the strategy has its limits: only 486 delegates will be awarded in caucus states.

Once winner-take-all contests become prevalent in April, the calendar becomes heavily weighted to northeastern states — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin being Santorum’s best opportunities.  May would be a more Santorum-friendly month.  June will be dominated by California, New Jersey and Utah, all presumably Romney-friendly states.

Contra Santorum’s flack, the fact that the eventual nominee will have money and organization does not help Santorum become the nominee today.  Despite the big wallet of Foster Friess, Santorum needs money and organization now.  And he needs Newt to be out of the race by Super Tuesday.  At the moment, that scenario seems unlikely.

–Karl

Jay Cost did a little mythbusting Monday regarding conservative support for Mitt Romney:

The conventional wisdom is that conservatives are dissatisfied with Romney, whose electoral coalition is comprised mostly of moderates and even liberal voters. That might be true of conservative media elites, but the broader electorate of conservatives have been much more amenable to Romney.

***

No doubt, Romney is dominating among moderates and liberals, but his haul is just as strong among “somewhat conservative” voters. It is only among the “very conservative” that Gingrich has a lead – although even this is much less than what one might have thought based on the way the media has been covering the story.

RTWT, as Jay has plenty of insights about how Romney’s voter base has changed from 2008 and the potential strength of his coalition.  It’s also a detailed example of one of Jay’s enduring truths of elections: strong partisans do not dominate the political process.  I would almost be tempted to end the summary here, as people who are sufficiently absorbed with politics to be reading (not to mention writing) are likely those most in need of a reminder that we are not all that representative a sample, even of Repbulicans or conservatives.  That message might be even more important the day after Rick Santorum sweeps Romney in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado (an impressive feat, but one involving low turnout caucuses where Romney did not camapign much).

However, as useful as Jay’s analysis is as a tonic, I doubt he would claim it tells the entire story of the GOP primary campaign.  Notably, Jay wrote earlier this month about the growing regional divide among conservatives:

Those in the North and Midwest are more sympathetic to Romney, viewing him perhaps as one of their own. But when we turn Southward, the links between Romney and the right seems to be much more tenuous. What is so fascinating about this is that we’re talking about people in different states who answer the ideological question similarly.  This is geography, not ideology.

I’m not sure that last bit (emphasis in original) is entirely true, depending on what Jay means by it.  It seems entirely possible to me that Northerners who self-identify as conservative do not always mean the same thing as Southerners do when self-identifying as conservative.  And the same is possibly true of other regions.  Indeed, based on last night’s results in Minnesota and Missouri, it’s not clear that the Midwest is as sympathetic to Romney as Jay may think.  Minnesota ends up looking more like Iowa than Iowa, let alone New Hampshire, Florida or Nevada (where, as Jay notes, Mitt won 57% of the somewhat conservative voters and 48% of the very conservative voters).

The easy explanation of some of these regional differences would be religion, but in examining that issue, Sean Trende adds the following caveat: “religion could be a stand-in for ideology, and that, regardless of self-identification, a self-described conservative evangelical Republican is significantly to the right of a self-described conservative who is non-evangelical.”

In sum, while I basically agree with Jay that political junkies tend to overstate the case that Romney does not appeal to conservatives, I also think we should be careful when we throw around the conservative label.  To take a more obvious example, many look at polls showing twice as many identify as conservative than identify as liberal without considering that: (a) some still self-identify as conservative Democrats and are likely more liberal than moderate or liberal Republicans; and (b) many self-identifying moderates are functionally liberal, but have fled the label.  Relying on self-identification may be a necessary evil in political polling.  However, in a nation as diverse and sprawling as the US, we need to always keep in mind the limitations of self-identification and the necessity of any candidate appealing to more than one type of conservative.

–Karl

“No delegates, just expectations and momentum, the intangibles open to interpretation.” OK, here’s a little more.

Interpret.

(And here are your results links for CO, MN and MO.)

–Karl

No principles to be found here. Just naked power, restrained only by an awareness of a greater power in D.C.

Decision may be read here. If you care to read such sophistry.

And thanks to whoever bought that torchiere lamp. You know who you are. (I don’t. I can see the items people buy, but not who bought them.) I had no idea that such high-end torchiere lamps existed, but I’m glad they do. And that Amazon sells them. And that you got to Amazon through this site.

It really does add up if everyone simply remembers to use the search box. Thanks very much to the people who do.

Calling SuperPACs a “threat to democracy” is sooo two days ago:

On a conference call with members of President Obama’s 2012 reelection committee Monday evening, campaign manager Jim Messina announced that donors should start funding Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC run by two former White House staffers, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney.

The move was a remarkable shift in approach toward the independent political expenditure groups, whose role in the political process Obama has criticized and from which his campaign had sought to keep distance.

***

Just seven months earlier, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt assured, “Neither the President nor his campaign staff or aides will fundraise for super PACs,” according to the LA Times.

BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski collects video of Obama’s attacks on the Citizens United ruling that made this spending possible, while Ben Smith recalls Obama’s earlier campaign financing hypocrisy in rejecting public funding:

That 2008 decision wasn’t made entirely out of some reformist purity. Obama would go back on a pledge to take public financing, accepting the hit on his reform credentials (which was enacted solely on the Times editorial page) in exchange for a serious financial advantage over John McCain. And his team decided that outside allies — whether the 527s or the more traditional DNC independent expenditure, could only muddy up the purity of his very pure message.

So what has changed? One major shift is that Obama faces an opponent whose rich friends really will pour tens of millions into outside groups, unlike the underfunded and relatively isolated John McCain.

Josh Kraushaar laid this out in detail last week.  Based on the 2011 numbers:

[T]he combined Obama and Democratic outside group totals to $98.3 million cash-on-hand, with the GOP groups tallying $94.1 million.  Take out the Democratic groups strictly devoted to congressional activities, and it’s a virtual financial tie. With labor and environmental groups poised to help Obama’s re-election, Democrats still could hold a narrow edge.  But it’s hardly the cash advantage that would allow Team Obama to run negative advertising uncontested against Romney, without an aggressive response.

It’s a far cry from the vision of a billion-dollar Obama re-election campaign bankroll that Democratic strategists are now downplaying.  And it shows that the amount of time Democrats spent complaining and attacking the liberalized campaign finance laws before the 2010 midterms would have been better spent preparing for an infrastructure utilizing super PACs to their advantage.  Priorities USA, headed by former White House spokesman Bill Burton, hasn’t yet shown it can compete with American Crossroads so far — and time is running short.

This was really a no-brainer for Obama.  In my experience — and his — there is no political price to be paid for gaming the campaign finance system.  Politico’s Jonathan Martin and others will sniff and move on, just to make sure it remains a Beltway story.  Indeed, it’s barely a “Beltway story” — it made the front page of the NYT, but not the WaPo.

–Karl

“I would send him money if he picked Rubio,” I said. “It’s hard to imagine sending him money under any other circumstances. But if he picked Rubio, I would donate to Romney.”

There are good reasons to think Marco Rubio would be a perfect VP candidate. He has the support of both the establishment and the Tea Party — a rarity in today’s divisive Republican politics. That ability to garner support from both factions of the party would be a key unifying force. Rubio would bring principle to a ticket that sadly seems to lack it otherwise. He cuts into Obama’s “Western strategy” (which is really a Latino strategy) and shows the party that we are not giving up on Latinos — but we are not giving up on conservatism either. And finally, Rubio is simply a galvanizing force: well-spoken and vigorous.

I still remember the excitement I felt when John McCain picked Sarah Palin. But she proved prone to gaffes in unstructured settings. This was a manufactured media narrative, but she unfortunately played into it. Rubio wouldn’t. He would bring the excitement without the same negatives.

My friend agreed, and it occurred to us that we should try to enforce this. That we should tell Romney: pick Rubio and I’ll send you a donation. Pick some tired mushy moderate like yourself and you get nothing. I’ll vote for you, sure — but you’re not getting a dime.

Yes, I agreed, we should tell Romney that.

So, I just did.

That’s the verdict from the normally easygoing Ed Morrissey.  While I agree with his biggest criticism of the poll, it is still possible to get something out of it.

I agree with Ed that the recent tactic of not disclosing the party breakdown of the sample is simply absurd.  In an era where trust in institutions — including journalism — is low and demands for increased transparency are on the rise everywhere, hiding this basic information from public view invites skepticism and ridicule.  The WaPo, ABC News, and Gary Langer ought to be embarrassed.

However, Ed also complains that it’s “a poll of general population adults rather than registered or likely voters, so it’s not even a proper polling type for the predictive outcome they claim.”  The poll does in fact provide head-to-head results for both adults and registered voters; the WaPo noted both results for each in its accompanying coverage: 

In a general-election test, Obama leads Romney 52 to 43 percent among all Americans; more narrowly, 51 to 45 percent, among registered voters. Among all adults, it’s Obama’s first time topping 50 percent in a head-to-head matchup with Romney since July; it’s his first time ever above that point among registered voters.

(Ed has updated his post to reflect this, while noting that other hyped aspects of the story do not give the RV numbers, which is certainly a fair critique.)

The history of this poll, and comparison to other polls, can tell us a bit about what is going on in this particular poll, even without the party breakdown of the sample.  Ed correctly notes that the sample in this poll tends to produce Dem-friendly results, which is probably why the recent decision to omit data about the sample really set him off.  However, I would add that the dynamic producing those results has been that this poll historically tends to undersample both parties (and disproportionately undersample Republicans).  The corollary, which (afaik) Ed has not stressed, is that the result inflates the sample of Independents.

Accordingly, this nugget from the WaPo coverage is doubly notable:

Obama’s momentum since mid-January has evened the score with Romney among political independents. Among independent voters in the last Post-ABC poll, Romney held a 12-point edge; now these voters split 48 percent for Obama, 47 percent for Romney.

First, this reportage tells you that the poll is still collecting the party data but not reporting it in the released results.  Second, when you compare this poll’s results to other recent polls (1/12 – 2/5), the Obama +6 result is not particularly out of line.  Indeed, the topline results here merely add 2 or 3 points to each side of the Rasmussen poll of likely voters conducted at roughly the same time, which is margin of error type stuff.  And it’s not all that different from the mid-January PPP poll which showed a more pronounced Obama surge with independents.  This poll’s similar gap with higher numbers suggests this poll’s sample probably includes more Republicans and possibly more Democrats (as the PPP poll did) at the expense of the now supposedly more Obama-friendly Indies.

What accounts for the supposed Obama surge with Indies?  One possibility the WaPo coverage raises is the State of the Union speech, which fell within this poll’s window.  However, that would not account for the surge in the PPP poll.  A more plausible explanation is the modest uptick in the economy (and it’s overhype in the establishment media).  This poll has Obama improving a few points not only in overall job approval, but approval on how he’s handling the economy.  However, even this poll has his job approval with Indies underwater, so presumably his approval on the economy does not look great with Indies.

Accordingly, the underlying dynamic in this poll is probably similar to that seen in the PPP poll: it’s not about Obama as much as it is about Romney. Q25 in this poll shows 52% say that the more they hear about Romney, the less they like him, which is not as bad as Newt Gingrich’s 60%, but still bad.  This is a function of the campaign and its media coverage.  Technically, Romney gets marginally better coverage than Obama… but Romney is getting more coverage than Obama.   Thus, people are hearing more negative coverage of Romney than Obama.  Obviously, the balance will shift once the GOP nominee is effectively known.  And this is one reason why head-to-head polling is basically meaningless at this point in the cycle.  So it’s a bit ironic that the head-to-head is where the WaPo/ABC poll chose to report the results for registered voters.

—

Update: I wasn’t even going to mention this, but Dem pollster Margie Omero does at the HuffPo:

Today the Washington Post/ABC News released a survey showing Obama over majority support among registered voters (51% Obama, 45% Romney). But as Romney’s pollster Neil Newhouse (a partner in the firm Public Opinion Strategies) pointed out in a blast email, the poll asked about a few of Romney potential liabilities just prior to the vote question. This goes against polling best practices, and it’s possible the survey shows elevated Obama numbers as a result.

Omero also notes that Obama’s liabilities were not questioned before concluding that the underlying issue is Romney’s likability.  Again, if Romney is the nominee, that is likely to shift.  But Omero highlights that the problem with the poll mirrors the dynamic in the media coverage.

–Karl