Full of Mitt

Why are Romney's numbers tanking against Obama?

Could it be his plan (now on hold) to put a car elevator (I kid you not) in his new mansion?

Could it be his pretzel logic on Leno regarding what he'd replace the Affordable Care Act with, seemingly come up with in the moment, making little to no sense?

Or maybe it's his increasingly off-putting "sense of humor":

At the outset of the call, Romney said he has some connections to Wisconsin.

“One of most humorous I think relates to my father. You may remember my father, George Romney, was president of an automobile company called American Motors … They had a factory in Michigan, and they had a factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and another one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” said Romney. “And as the president of the company he decided to close the factory in Michigan and move all the production to Wisconsin. Now later he decided to run for governor of Michigan and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign.”

Romney said he recalled a parade in which the school band marching with his father’s campaign only knew the Wisconsin fight song, not the Michigan song.

“So every time they would start playing ‘On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin,’ my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop, because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin,” said Romney, laughing.

Ho, ho, ho!

Yes, it's the perfect time for Willard to lock up the nomination.

Drip Drip

Latest polling:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney may have had the best performance on the debate stage in Arizona last night, but Thursday morning wasn't as great -- Romney dropped to 39 percent in Rasmussen's nightly tracking poll of a potential matchup between him and President Obama nationally. Obama got 49 percent, giving him a ten point lead.

How's that electability argument going, Willard?

For the Win

The endorsement that really counts:

Boston, MA - Mitt Romney today announced the support of conservative activist Christine O’Donnell.

“Christine has been a leader in the conservative movement for many years,” said Mitt Romney. “Christine recognizes that excessive government threatens us now and threatens future generations, and I am pleased to have her on my team.”

That's right, the one who says she's not a witch.

Meanwhile, Mitt lost a vote:



Either Romney really is so bigoted as to deny this gay ex-serviceman his rights, or he's such a soulless panderer that he no leader at all.

In any case, it all may be moot soon. Gingrich is more than the not-Romney flavor of the moment, he's the winner of the not-Romney sweepstakes. At least he'll make Richard Nixon look like a professional in the General Election.

Guess who's benefited most for the GOP debates -- and has the best organization in Iowa: BHO.

Remember this from four years ago?



Still gives me chills when he says, "They said this day would never come..."

Can I Get a Mitt-ness?

Another week, another GOP Presidential Debate. And I use that term, "Presidential," loosely. The big news from the debate as well as the past week is the Romney campaign heading into freak-out mode as Newt Gingrich has taken virtually all the Herman Cain support and emerged as the frontrunner -- the last "Not Romney" standing and the one who looks like he's going to win unless something big happens quick.

The base doesn't love Mitt, and the more he panders the less attractive he seems overall. He not only sent out all the surrogates to bash Newt last week (not hard -- he was a disaster as Speaker of the House and those who served under him are all telling that tale), he's even stooped so low as to enlist the satanic Ann Coulter as a surrogate. Time to draw a pentagram on the floor, Mitt, light a candle in the middle and call forth Beelzebub.

The moment that sparked a million tweets in last night's debate was Mitt getting so fed up with Rick Perry quoting his book back to him that he offered a $10,000 bet to settle the matter. Because he's one with the American Middle Class, and we all put $10k on the table when someone says something we don't like. It went like this:

As one YouTube commenter notes:

fyi, a $10,000 bet amounts to .00005 of romney's net worth. so if you had a net worth of $400,000, that would amount to a 20 dollar bet.

So now Gingrich has landslide leads in GOP polls for two early Primary states, South Carolina and Florida, and is chipping away at Mitt's firewall, New Hampshire. And the upshot of all these debates, poll shifts and Republican exposure:

Turning to the general election, President Obama’s standing has improved in Florida, always a key presidential battleground state.

Forty-six percent of registered voters in the state approve of his job, which is up five points since October.

In hypothetical match-ups, the president leads Romney by seven points (48 to 41 percent) and Gingrich by 12 points (51 to 39 percent).

In South Carolina -- a reliable Republican state in presidential contests -- Obama’s approval rating stands at 44 percent, and he holds narrow leads over Romney (45 to 42 percent) and Gingrich (46 to 42 percent).

That's right: if the election were held today, President Barack Hussein Obama beats both Willard Mitt Romney and Newton Leroy Gingrich in that bastion of the Confederacy, South Carolina.

Maybe in his second term he'll really be able to hit the gas for this great country.

Of Course We Do

The poll says:

Americans generally favor raising taxes on higher-income Americans and eliminating tax deductions for some corporations as ways of paying for President Obama's proposed jobs plan.

Two more interesting parts of the poll. When people are described the elements of the jobs plan, a plurity is for it:

By 45% to 32%, more Americans want their member of Congress to vote for rather than against a jobs bill similar to the one President Obama proposed last week, with the rest having no opinion.

Even more telling, those who are actually pay attention - heavily for it:

While fewer than half of all Americans favor passage of a jobs bill similar to Obama's, a solid majority of Americans who are following news of the bill very closely, 57%, want to see it passed.

If we can assume that includes the % of Americans who are being attentive to what's being said about the bill on Fox News, that's an even more impressive statistic.

Now it's all about the fight. No showdown yet on the horizon, but we're hankering for one.

Polls and Elections

The GOP polls lower than ever in the history of the CNN poll, i.e. since 1992. President Obama sees a surge against the "generic Republican candidate."

And in Wisconsin, the recall election meant to oust GOP control falls short.

Still the Winner

According to the new NY Times/CBS News poll, the whole debt ceiling crisis, where for the first time a political party (starts with "R") used the full faith and credit of the United States of America as a bargaining chip, that same party is the l-o-s-e-r in public opinion:

More than four out of five people surveyed said that the recent debt-ceiling debate was more about gaining political advantage than about doing what is best for the country. Nearly three-quarters said that the debate had harmed the image of the United States in the world.

Republicans in Congress shoulder more of the blame for the difficulties in reaching a debt-ceiling agreement than President Obama and the Democrats, the poll found.

The Republicans compromised too little, a majority of those polled said. All told, 72 percent disapproved of the way Republicans in Congress handled the negotiations, while 66 percent disapproved of the way Democrats in Congress handled negotiations.

The public was more evenly divided about how Mr. Obama handled the debt ceiling negotiations: 47 percent disapproved and 46 percent approved.

The public’s opinion of the Tea Party movement has soured in the wake of the debt-ceiling debate. The Tea Party is now viewed unfavorably by 40 percent of the public and favorably by just 20 percent, according to the poll. In mid-April 29 percent of those polled viewed the movement unfavorably, while 26 percent viewed it favorably. And 43 percent of Americans now think the Tea Party has too much influence on the Republican Party, up from 27 percent in mid-April.

And the public is smart enough to know that jobs, not deficits, are the problem to be solved:

But with the nation’s unemployment rate at a stubborn 9.2 percent, 62 percent of those polled said that creating jobs should be the priority.

“Cutting spending is important, but getting people back to work is more important,” said Diane Sherrell, 56, a Republican from Erwin, N.C. “If people are working, they are more productive. There is less crime, there is less depression, there is less divorce. There are less hospital and medical bills. If you put people back to work, you are cutting spending.”

Stanley Oland, 62, a Republican from Kalispell, Mont., said that the government needed new jobs to generate the economic activity and the revenue it requires.

“That revenue supports the basic foundation for the economy, creates more jobs and stimulates the economy,” he said. “Unless you have working people you don’t have revenue from taxes. If you cut spending, jobs will be eliminated and you won’t get any revenue. Every dollar spent creates jobs.”

Yep, they know that Obama's still digging out of the guano pile created by President Cheney/Bush's tax cuts, unfunded wars and mandates. There's one message that, I contend, can resonate today over all others:

Tax. The. Rich.

Rebound

Great piece by Joshua Green in The Atlantic today, Has the GOP Hit a Wall?, that basically argues that the Party, which last week had all but declared victory in the House even though November is more than three months away, has no place to go but down in the polls:

When a single party holds power, that party appropriately tends to be the focus of attention. But when the possibility that the other party might take over becomes real--and we're certainly at that point--the attention starts to shift. This always struck me as a potential problem. I don't really imagine that Republicans plan to repeal health care or the new financial regulations (although, who knows?). But they haven't offered up much in the way of a compelling alternative agenda.

Case in point, National Republican Congressional Committee chair, Rep. Pete Session (R-TX), could not even remotely answer the normally milquetoast David Gregory on Sunday morning when asked what hard decisions the GOP were prepared to make, as policy, to make good on all their grandstanding. It truly is something to behold:



Zero. As in, great big. Add to it that Sessions "thought" to articulate that America is somehow nostalgic for the policies of George W. Bush...well, hilarity ensues, including the walk-back. Not before the Dems pounced -- sure, let's make this election a referendum on the President who ended up losing millions of jobs, creating a bubble, crashing the markets, bailing out the banks, not to mention starting two wars (and, I'd add, failing to deal seriously with the intelligence foretelling the 9/11 attacks):

"We need to go back to the exact same agenda that is empowering the free enterprise system rather than diminishing it," said NRCC chairman Pete Sessions on "Meet the Press" Sunday morning.

For Democrats, the comment was a gift -- one that they plan to use repeatedly between now and the fall.

"We could not have made the case any clearer than Pete Sessions did that Republicans only want to go back to the failed policies of President Bush," said DCCC spokesman Ryan Rudominer.

It's a daring strategy for Republicans -- one which includes explicit arguments for Social Security cuts, deregulation, and the repeal of a broadly popular Wall Street reform bill. And it's one they hope they can ride to victory.

Added a GOP colleague of Sessions:

"Look, I think President Bush's stock has gone up a lot since he left office," Cornyn said. "People appreciate his resolve and commitment in the face of a national security threat like 9/11. He had his challenges no doubt. We have learned a lot about things we could have done better as Republicans in terms of fiscal responsibility...I think a lot of people are looking back with a little more -- with more fondness on President Bush's administration, and I think history will treat him well."

I think not. In any case there's two new items that point to Joshua Green being correct.

First, President Obama appears to have put together the votes he needs in the Senate to extend unemployment benefits to help keep alive those left jobless by the Bush/GOP policies of the previous eight years, shaming the Republican obstructionists in the process.

Second, for the first time since generic ballots in the fall races have been polled, the Dems are on the rebound.

Can you say...surge?

New Catalog

Hate to do this since I seem to have a (small but) growing number of GOP friends, but I do think that the biggest lies need to be called out when they happen, especially the most dangerous ones, and there's a whole new catalog on display this week.

• There's the McCarthy-esque redbaiting lie that there are 17 socialists in the House of Representatives fro Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL).

• There's GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann's gun-crazies inspiring lie that Obama is going to create young adult "re-education camps." She also believes Obama is going to trade in the U.S. dollar for a global currency, but that was last week's lie.

• There's GOP Chairman Michael Steele's anti-democracy lie that the voter registration group ACORN engages in voter fraud and will somehow take over the counting of the next U.S. Census.

• There's a whole big homophobic commercial full of lies that pretends to be ordinary people speaking out against marriage equality, but turns out of be full of actors per the uncovered audition tape (now pulled from YouTube for "copyright infringement").

And, last but not least, there's a huge lie being circulated by the Republican talking heads that the latest Pew Research poll proves that Obama is the "most polarizing" President ever...when really it just means that hardcore, hard-right Republicans are a shrinking minority, small than they've ever been in modern times:



As always, I'll say that the GOP are not gone for good, and that the timing of their return depends on the success of the current President and, potentially, his Democratic successor in eight years. But if the public eventually turns back to the Republicans due to lies rather than truth, it'll be another dark day for America.

Like December 12, 2000.

Serious

Time to get serious, folks. I you really want the GOP out of the entire Executive branch, if you want Supreme Court justices that won't roll back rights, if you want a foreign policy that's not destructive to U.S. global interests, if you want a President who doesn't believe that you're only rich at earning $5,000,000/year, if you want a President who knows how to use email and the Internet to glean information for himself and create new economic opportunities, if you want a President who's not in the pocket of the big huge oil companies, then it's time to stop bemoaning this or that little disagreement you may have about some position or tactic in the Obama campaign.

Because if the new Reuters/Zogby poll is right, McCain's negative attacks are working and he's moved into the lead.