[Posted by Karl]

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. (more…)

The story is a couple of days old, but voter fraud is always timely.

[Video removed as it disables comments. Please view it here.]

But who would have ever guessed it possible that illegals might be engaged in voter fraud???

Oh, right. Me. And pretty much all of you too.

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: Comments should be working again now that the embedded video is off the post. Sorry for any problems.

[Posted by Karl]

Anyone who thought Newt Gingrich might go gently into that good night after an apparent shellacking by Mitt Romney in Nevada was mistaken, to put it mildly:

He said he expects to be at parity with Romney by the April 3 Texas primary and “we will go to Tampa,” site of the GOP convention this summer.

Nor is Gingrich going to fulfill what’s no doubt another Romney fantasy — going positive. There had been reports suggesting he would, until Gingrich cleared that up at the caucus night press conference he held in Las Vegas instead of a rally. “I stayed relentlessly positive in Iowa and I lost 22 points,” he said.

The dismissal of the good-cheer strategy came amid the customary Gingrich assault on Romney and President Obama. He labeled them “George Soros-approved candidates” and added for good measure that Romney was “pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-tax increase,” a lousy job creator, indifferent toward the poor, and a purveyor of falsehoods. As for Obama, his administration has declared war on religion, Gingrich said, and is pursuing a “radical secular ideology.”

Newt mapped out a detailed strategy that would keep him in the presidential race all the way to the Republican convention, based on how delegates will be awarded in each of the upcoming states.  And it appears that Sheldon Adelson will keep funding a pro-Gingrich SuperPAC, even as he signals he will provide even more generous support to Romney if he becomes the Republican nominee.

Gingrich paints this as his refusal to fulfill Romney’s fantasies.  But I wonder about that.

After all, if Newt dropped out, media coverage of the GOP nomination campaign would drop, probably precipitously.  Mitt is not helped by Newt’s attacks from the left.  But Newt’s attacks from the right provide Mitt with an opportunity to not only try harder to sell himself to the conservative base of the GOP, but also subtextually suggest to mushy, unafilliated voters that Romney is not the extremist Democrats will try to portray should Mitt win the nomination. (Yes, that attack makes no sesnse to conservatives, but which GOP nominee has not been attacked as an extremist by the Dems?)

Moreover, regardless of what Newt does, Ron Paul is not going away.  Paul will continue to amass delegates in hopes of influencing the platform and getting the most high-profile speaking slot he can negotiate at the convention.  If Newt dropped out, the media narrative would inevitably devolve into a Romney-Paul discussion, likely funneling more votes and delegates to Paul.  Should Romney win the nomination, it might be further useful to him to be accomodating ”demands” from a second-place Newt on issues like Obamacare than having a media narrative of the GOP convention about struggles over defense cuts, drug legalization and the gold standard.

In short, Newt continuing his campaign may not be a “You know who this benefits?” situation… but it’s not clear that a Newtless campaign benefits Romney, either.

–Karl

Looking more and more inevitable every day.

I have an idea — hardly an original one, but one I believe in — that would make a Romney ticket semi-exciting. I discussed it with some like-minded folks last night. I think I’ll save it for Monday, but feel free to speculate in the comments.

[Posted by Karl]

Only the naive thought stories like this were going away:

Political hacktivist group Anonymous claims to have found emails linking Texas Rep. Ron Paul to an American white supremacist group, a claim the Paul campaign says is completely untrue.

Las Vegas-based group American Third Party Position (AP3) — whose stated goal is “to reach out to Americans of European ancestry and particularly to disenfranchised White workers, farmers and students who have become victims of the discriminatory affirmative action policies” — was allegedly hacked by Anonymous Tuesday, and emails purportedly reveal close ties between Paul and members who are admitted white supremacists.

Last week the story was that Paul was deeply involved in the company that produced racist, anti-gay, conspiracy-mongering newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.

I am in no position to confirm or deny the Anonymous claims, but Paul is the guy who once bragged about how much money he raised from the mailing list for The Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto.  Paul’s columns appeared in  in the American Free Press — another Carto publication.  His 2008 campaign was, er, unconcerned about donations coming via the Stormfront website.  And Paul’s association with Civil War revisionists and the John Birch Society are recent-to-ongoing.  Accordingly, the campaign’s denials are going to be met with skepticism in many quarters.

But probably not from all quarters.  My interest in the newsletter story has been Paul’s apologists and supporters in the media and libertarian circles.  These folks are are spinning for Paul because they see his campaign as their best chance at gaining real-world political influence.  That’s interesting insofar as these sorts of libertarians generally look down on supporters of the major parties as grubby and unprincipled.  But for all their touting of Ron Paul as the principled candidate in the race, he’s a poseur on entitlements.

Beyond what these stories reveal about supposedly principled libertarians, there is a potential residual effect on the election.  Although Paul is downplaying expectations for the Nevada caucus, it appears he plans to stay in the race and amass as many delegates as he can for leverage at the GOP convention.  Giving Paul a prime speaking slot or influence over the platform will give the establishment media a chance to drape his dirty laundry all over the eventual nominee, much as they hung Pat Buchanan’s around the neck of George H. W. Bush in 1992.

–Karl

[Posted by Karl]

As usual, you are positively encouraged to engage in sockpuppetry in this thread. The usual rules apply.

Please, be sure to switch back to your regular handle when commenting on other threads. I have made that mistake myself.

And remember: the worst sin you can commit on this thread is not being funny.

—

Yesterday, WaPo “fact checker,” Glenn Kessler, evaluated Pres. Obama’s claim that “some wanted to let the auto industry die.”  After wryly noting that Obama has “a fondness for using rhetorical straw men in his speeches,” he awards the president a mere two Pinocchios. 

Kessler somehow manages to get through the column without mentioning the Ford Motor Company, which afaik is part of the auto industry.  Nor does he mention the other members of the auto industry aside from GM and Chrysler who manufacture and otherwise employ folks here in the US.  Granted, we tend to think of a company like Toyota as “foreign,” but Chrysler was sold to Fiat, so the nationalism card should not be in play from a fact-checking standpoint.

Indeed, Kessler also writes “a credible case can be made that an auto industry bankruptcy likely would not have been possible in November or December of 2008 (when Romney and other Republicans pushed for it) because there was no bank financing available.”  If we want to talk about “cases,” a case can be made that a regular bankruptcy would have yielded about the same number of continuing jobs at GM as the taxpayer-funded bankruptcy.  And a case easily could be made that a GOP administration could have come up with a bankruptcy deal that would have looked a lot more like a normal proceeding than a politicially-motivated bailout of the United Auto Workers.  But a “case” is not a fact. 

In short, it’s another example of Kessler, like other establishment media operations, pretending political debates are much simpler questions of fact. And this is a particularly bad example of the genre:

Okay, out of 300 million Americans, maybe there were “some folks” who felt the auto industry should die. But Obama appeared to be suggesting that GOP lawmakers were willing to let the auto industry collapse. On that basis, the evidence is not very strong. The quotes we received — and others we researched — were mostly questions of tactics.

As the administration’s internal debate suggests, the answers were not clear. Certainly, some top administration officials thought at least one car company should die.

From the left, I can argue that Kessler concedes the vague “some” is almost undoubtedly true, meriting no Pinocchios.  From the right, I can note that Kessler came up with zero examples of Obama’s GOP critics wanting the US auto industry to die, which is the politically salient claim.  Indeed, Kessler notes the GOP’s real problem was with the UAW, while largely avoiding the fact that the Obama adminsitration’s maneuver here was mostly about bailing out the UAW’s unsustainable pension and healthcare benefits.

As Kessler seems bent on keeping this up, it is again time to note  the WaPo fact-checker blog was on hiatus from the last day of the 2008 election campaign through January 9, 2011. When the federal government was run entirely by a supermajority of Democrats, there was no need for fact-checking.  In an election year, there is a demand for media spin of Obama’s rhetoric.

–Karl

[Posted by Karl]

Newt Gingrich is easily branded as a loose cannon.  Indeed, I’ve done it, because it’s true.  However, frontrunner Mitt Romney is far from immune from self-destructive gaffes:

Obsessive attention to detail suffuses Mitt Romney’s candidacy for president, from the number of times staff members check the microphones at his rallies to their relentless scouring of Twitter.

But Mr. Romney’s aides cannot always bring that well-known level of discipline to one crucial aspect of the campaign: their candidate’s seemingly endless ability to utter remarks that, to the delight of his critics, sail onto political blogs, YouTube and Twitter.

Romney’s comment that “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” caused Jonah Goldberg to ask “What is wrong with this guy?” and to later answer that “as even he will admit, he’s a late arrival. And, as you might expect, he speaks conservatism as a second language.”

It may be worse than that.  As Goldberg also noted, “[t]he frustrating problem with Romney is that his flubs and gaffes either share liberal assumptions or are caricatures of conservative ones.”  I would argue the problem is more specific.  Romney’s gaffes are rooted in his wealth problem.  He alternatively makes comments that feed the narrative of an out-of-touch fatcat or irritate the GOP base with faux populism designed to counter that narrative.  Indeed, yesterday Romney said that he was not concerned about the very poor or the very rich, when his concern should be whatever benefits America without regard to class issues.  Instead, his sensitivity to the wealth issue causes him to not  only disregard the affluent  and the poor rhetorically, but to produce a mediocre tax plan and to back indexing the minimum wage for inflation, which ironically hurts the poor.

In short, Romney recognizes his wealth is a political liability and his attempts to address that liability often become an additional liability.  His discomfort also feeds the perception that he is inauthentic.  Unless he finds a personal comfort level with his wealth and its political implications, all of these problems will linger into the general election, where Team Obama will exploit them ruthlessly.

–Karl

I get her point that a state mandating purchase of health insurance is not unconstitutional in the same obvious and insulting way as a mandate from Congress is.

That said . . .

Three cheers for Romneycare?

Really?

Even his most avid supporters can barely muster one, let alone two.

And Ann is giving three?

Really?

Just when you thought Eric Holder was really in trouble over Fast and Furious, you learn that he’s potentially in trouble over something else:

A U.S. Justice Department source has told The Daily Caller that at least two DOJ prosecutors accepted cash bribes from allegedly corrupt finance executives who were indicted under court seal within the past 13 months, but never arrested or prosecuted.

The sitting governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, his attorney general and an unspecified number of Virgin Islands legislators also accepted bribes, the source said, adding that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is aware prosecutors and elected officials were bribed and otherwise compromised, but has not held anyone accountable.

The bribed officials, an attorney with knowledge of the investigation told TheDC, remain on the taxpayers’ payroll at the Justice Department without any accountability. The DOJ source said Holder does not want to admit public officials accepted bribes while under his leadership.

Remember that Holder is sitting on the hot seat tomorrow morning answering questions about U.S. gunrunning to Mexico. I don’t know whether he will have to answer questions about this newly emerging scandal tomorrow . . . but he will have to sometime.

If he doesn’t resign first.

[Posted by Karl]

Jim Geraghty (among others) , relying on Gallup, notes Pres. Obama’s job approval rating for 2011 is anemic in most swing states. Just as notable are Obama’s disapproval numbers in swing states, as they show an incumbent underwater, often with majority disapproval: IA (45.6/45.9); PA (45/47.8); VA (44.5/49); NC (43.7/48.5); FL (43.6/47.8); OH (42.1/50.2); NM (41.7/51.2); NV (41.3/50.6); CO (40.4/52.2); and NH (38.7/54.4).

Geraghty adds that this does not necessary translate to votes which is true, but probably not good for Obama.  In 2004 — a polarized, close election — Bush lost states where he had net positive job approval, but did not win one state where he had a net negative job approval.  As Jay Cost notes, the only two years where we see a substantial amount of support for the incumbent president among disapprovers — 1972 and 1980 – are also not good news for Obama.

National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar correctly reminds us the Gallup data is from “throughout 2011, reflecting as much the past year as the present,” while noting Obama’s national job approval hasn’t moved much this year.  Where recent polls are available, they generally confirm Kraushaar’s hypothesis.  I covered IA and NH earlier this month; those states are marginally better than Gallup, but they’re also less economically distressed than most (and Obama is still underwater in NH).  In PA, recent polls have Obama at 45/50 and 40/49.  In VA, it 48/47 and 42/51. In NC, it’s 47/49 or 50.  In FL, it’s 44/49.  In OH, it’s 44/51.  In NV and NM, GS Strategies has Obama at 41/57.3 and 43.3/56.8 (the firm did not provide a complete breakdown of the sample, but the firm’s polls for FL, OH and VA are close to other public polls).  In CO, Ciruli Associates (a local firm) had Obama at 39/53 in December 2011.

The news is marginally better for Obama in January’s Purple Poll (.pdf), even though it spotlights FL (40/56).  Obama is underwater in the Southern Swing states (FL, NC & VA) at 42/53 and the Rust Belt (NH, OH & PA) at 41/51.  However, he’s above water in the Heartland (WI, MN & IA) at 48/47, and only marginally underwater in the Wild West (CO, NV & NM) at 47/49.  That showing in the West is improved from the September poll; his numbers have not moved significantly in any of the other regions.  I might trust that uptick, as I doubt it’s coincidence that Obama spent last week in Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.  Time is the candidate’s most valuable resource.  Obama needs to spend his in states where he has the best odds of goosing his job approval rating to a net positive.

–Karl