Mourdock up 10 over Lugar, 48/38, four days before Indiana primary

Indystar calls this latest poll result a “dramatic slide,” and is it ever. Incumbent Senator Dick Lugar led the race in the last iteration of the Howey/DePauw poll by seven points. Today, he’s trailing by ten, and Lugar has only four days to turn it around:

The Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll, conducted by two prominent Republican and Democratic pollsters, shows Mourdock with a 48 percent to 38 percent lead over Lugar. …

The poll shows a dramatic slide for Lugar, who in his last election in 2006 won with more than 80 percent of the vote after Democrats considered him so unbeatable that they didn’t field a candidate against him.

Only about a month ago, a Howey/DePauw Battleground poll showed Lugar leading Mourdock 42 percent to 35 percent.

When voters who were not solid in their support for a candidate yet and were merely leaning in one direction or the other are removed, Mourdock is still leading 43 percent to 35 percent over Lugar.

Just a month ago, the Howey/DePauw survey was good enough to get analysts believing that Lugar could hold serve on Tuesday:

U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar is in the most precarious position of his political career since autumn 1974 when he unsuccessfully challenged Democratic incumbent Birch Bayh. A Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll released today reveals Lugar with a 42-35% lead over Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock, with the two evenly splitting the vote among the 72% of primary voters identifying with the GOP. It has prompted HPI to move this race into “tossup” from “Leans Lugar.”

The poll by Republican pollster Christine Matthews of Bellwether Research and Democrat pollster Fred Yang of Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, was conducted March 26-28 of 503 likely Republican primary voters and March 26 -27 of 503 likely Indiana general election voters. It has a +/-4.5% margin of error
.

The polling came after Lugar had experienced a terrible week. He took broadside headlines related to the residency issue in the week before the polling, with the Democratic Marion County Election Board denying the voting address he had used since joining the Senate in the late 70’s. The three days of polling coincided with the beginning of a statewide Club for Growth TV assault ad branding Lugar as a big tax and spender who loves earmarks.

That’s a seventeen-point turnaround for the six-term incumbent, which is dramatic indeed. Now it looks like Lugar might make history in an entirely negative way:

Indiana’s primary will be held next Tuesday in a race where ads sponsored by a pro-Lugar PAC have recently been pulled – suggesting the intraparty coup many have suspected would befall the longtime member of the Senate will indeed come to fruition.

In the 2010 cycle, Republicans saw three-term Utah Senator Bob Bennett and two-term Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski fall in the GOP convention/primary process, while five-term Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter switched parties knowing full well that he would lose his primary to eventual general election winner, Pat Toomey. (Murkowski ultimately retained her seat through a write-in campaign).

But if Senator Lugar loses next Tuesday, he’ll join an exclusive club with a current membership of just one.

A Smart Politics review of U.S. Senate election data finds that if Dick Lugar loses the Indiana Republican primary election on May 8th, he will become just the second six-term U.S. Senator – and the first Republican – to fail in his renomination bid in the direct election era of the past 100 years.

Be sure to follow the link to learn the trivia answer as to who the other club member would be.

If Lugar loses by this kind of margin on Tuesday, he won’t be the only one embarrassed by the loss. Outgoing Governor Mitch Daniels has campaigned for Lugar, especially over the last few weeks, cutting TV ads for Lugar’s campaign. A loss would also be a rebuke to Daniels, and could hurt his standing in the GOP down the road with the grassroots and the establishment. Gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence was smarter, refusing two months ago to endorse anyone in the Senate primary:

“I’ve known both men and respected both men for more than 20 years, and I think that when you have two good choices in a primary, you ought to let voters decide,” he said. “I consider Richard Lugar a mentor and a friend, and Richard Mourdock is someone I have admired as well.”

A Mourdock victory would be a triumph for the Tea Party, which also forced Orrin Hatch into a primary in Utah, if only barely. That would belie the media narrative these days that the Tea Party has run out of gas. They obviously haven’t in Indiana.

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Attention, nerds: Real lightsabers now available

Via Gizmodo, a palate cleanser in honor of Star Wars Day. The good news? Real lasers are involved and they are, apparently, spectacular to behold — so much so that you need special shades to be in close proximity to this thing. The bad news? The exciting fight scenes in the promo are somewhat undercut by the voiceover insisting that you’re … not supposed to fight with the saber. Yeah. Extremely dangerous. So what you have here, apparently, is (a) a display piece that can’t be safely displayed without proper eyewear for the three percent of consumers who use it as intended and (b) a formidably risky weapon for the 97 percent who don’t.

On the upside, fellas, lady nerds are bound to be impressed, especially if you wear an old gray muscle shirt while wielding it like the dude in the clip to look extra bad-ass. Exit question: What’s the over/under on casualties at the next “Star Wars” convention?

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Audio: Michael Moore covers “The Times They Are A-Changin’” for the new “Occupy” benefit album

Via CNS. Reasons to believe that this is real: The “Occupy This Album” benefit project has been in the works for months, with reports that Moore would sing on it surfacing as far back as last November. A news release about it appeared on the wires just this afternoon. And let’s face it, the voice does sound like his.

Reasons not to believe this is real: If you were going to parody the idea of Michael Moore singing for “Occupy,” this is precisely the song you’d choose and this is exactly how it would sound. It’s like a lost track from “A Mighty Wind.” Trey Parker and Matt Stone would reject it on grounds that it’s too far over the top as a goof on the hippie nostalgia that runs through the movement.

And yet, here we are.

Two clips for you, one of the track and the other via the Washington Free Beacon of select occupiers expressing their feelings about Obama. Given public reaction to OWS these days, their reaction to him must be music to The One’s ears. No pun intended. Content warning.

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Video: “The Amazing Spider-Man” trailer

This trailer is better than the last one was, so it’s got that going for it. It also looks more like a video game than any movie trailer I’ve ever seen, I think.

How much more of this? Maybe a lot more, says Ross Douthat:

This was exactly the reaction I had to the original “Iron Man,” whose success enabled Marvel to set in motion the multi-movie build-up to Whedon’s “Avengers.” It, too, was a well-written, well-directed blockbuster, but one that filled me with a kind of creeping despair — because its success guaranteed that the superhero era in American cinema, which then seemed to be waning a bit as lesser franchises failed to do Superman-Batman-Spiderman business, would continue as long as studio executives had semi-well known properties to greenlight (or, in the case of this summer’s completely unnecessary “Spiderman” movie, reboot). If “The Avengers” hits as big in the United States as it’s hitting overseas, its influence will doubtless be even more enduring, guaranteeing us superhero sequels and prequels and reboots and re-reboots as far as the eye (wrapped, of course, in 3-D glasses) can see.


Yeah, if you’re sick of superhero movies, “The Avengers” is a special threat because it’s bound to lead other studios into making multi-film serials. A “Super Friends” package now seems like a fait accompli, with the “Legion of Doom” characters possibly getting their own movies too. Superheroes unto cinematic death. Maybe it’ll be worth watching the same basic story with the same basic F/X told over and over again to reach the point where ambitious directors start reinventing the genre by playing with the conventions of the standard “superhero movie.” That should take, what, another 20 years or so?

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Video: Dark Knight says Occupiers are jokers, too

I asked the question yesterday as to whether the Occupy movement has become a joke. Today, the Dark Knight answers — and provides a little research, too. Not surprisingly, Batman has some pretty kind words for Bruce Wayne and Wayne Enterprises (say …. he does look familiar), but more importantly, points out who pays the taxes in the country — and who uses their dollars to influence politics and elections. Needless to say, the answers might surprise some Occupiers, and perhaps dissuade them from being Jokers:Yes, this is a palate-cleaner from Steven Crowder, but one that reminds us that the unions and the Occupiers are pretty much joined at the hip. To what extent? This report from KALW gives us a hint:

Tuesday’s May Day protests marked the re-emergence of the Occupy movement with coordinated protests around the Bay Area. But May Day—known around the world as International Workers Day—is traditionally a day when union members mobilize around labor issues. In San Francisco, those are ongoing.


The Golden Gate Bridge Labor Coalition – which represents 14 unions – and the Golden Gate Highway and Transportation District – which oversees the bridge, Golden Gate Transit buses – have been in contract negotiations since last year. At issue are healthcare premium costs, pay raises, and retirement benefits.

On May Day, union members and Occupy protesters joined forces—causing the Golden Gate Highway and Transportation District to cancel ferry service between Marin County and San Francisco for eight hours.

What a coinky-dink! Occupy protests just happened to shut down the transportation services that are at issue in a public-sector labor standoff.

Of course, the news isn’t all good for Big Labor these days:

In the latest sign of the fast-shrinking Big Labor movement, the National Labor College established in 1969 by AFL-CIO icon George Meany to teach new labor organizing tactics and management to new generations of activists is selling its sprawling Silver Spring, Md. campus.

The reason: they just can’t afford to keep the facilities housing the academic arm of the labor movement open anymore. “The cost to operate and maintain a large campus in such an expensive metropolitan area is exorbitant,” said the college. No other college in the Washington area has closed or is planning to close because of costs.

Instead of teaching students at the facility just off New Hampshire Avenue at the Capital Beltway, online courses will be offered. Once the 47-acre facility is rezoned and sold, student housing will disappear. Instead, new students will get to live in union halls. Some 200,000 union leaders have passed through the college which offers undergraduate degrees at community college prices.

The 99% are the taxpayers, folks. The 1% are unions trying to protect their sinecures, and Occupiers are just their pawns on the chessboard.

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Video: Why does our military need the best, really?

President Obama certainly likes to talk a big game about “investing” in our national future, but, in his infinite magnanimousness, he seems more inclined toward a particular type of government “investment.” The green jobs, bailouts, and food stamps that he supports (on behalf of Americans’ welfare, of course!) are more high-risk political gambles on the taxpayer dime than safe bets with reliable returns. Conspicuously absent from the president’s “winning the future” rhetoric is our military — at least, in the context of funneling them free money on behalf of special interests. Instead, the President has decided that a ‘leaner, more efficient, more agile’ military is in the United States’ best interests… rather than, you know, a leaner, more efficient Department of Agriculture or Education or Energy, because heaven knows there’s no waste, fraud, nor abuse to be had in those departments, right?

While total defense spending has been steadily increasing for over a decade, defense spending as a portion of the federal budget and as a percentage of GDP has been buried under the ongoing explosion of entitlement spending. But, of course, instead of bravely confronting the incoming debt crisis by attacking the core problem–by reforming the entitlement and welfare programs that consume that vast majority of our budget–defense spending instead became a political football subject to Congressional whimsy, and those “automatic cuts” are already taking place:

The Defense Department’s core fiscal 2013 budget at $525.4 billion reflects the already announced one percent reduction from the current year, which comes from reducing Army and Marine personnel and ending or limiting purchases of expensive new equipment. It spells out in more detail the how the administration plans to cut future expenses related to the personnel reductions, by establishing commissions to take on the controversial tasks of reducing or closing military bases and updating military retirement programs.

One percent might not seem like much, but, in the first of a three-part video series, the Heritage Foundation provides an eye-opening, technical lesson as to why it would be a wise move for the government to focus a little more of its “investing” prowess into maintaining and bettering the most elite fighting force in the world. Our troops face real, evolving challenges every day, and unlike Congress, terrorists don’t mess around:

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Vault Green Room Ed Morrissey Show The most pro-White House U.S. media outlet according to Al Qaeda is…

A limited series of writings from Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad were declassified and released today by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. You can peruse the entire release here, but Byron York on Twitter flagged what is likely to garner the most attention in conservative media circles. With their top leadership holed up in compounds and caves throughout Pakistan, I guess they have a lot of time to watch and analyze the news. This doesn’t appear to be from Bin Laden, but rather an Al-Qaeda media flack preparing analysis for “the Shayk”. But whoever he is (Adam Gadahn maybe?) he seems to have a pretty decent understanding of the U.S. media landscape.

From the professional point of view, they are all on one level-except (Fox News) channel which falls into the abyss as you know, and lacks neutrality too.

As for the neutrality of CNN in English, it seems to be in cooperation with the government more than the others (except Fox News of course). Its Arabic version brings good and detailed reports about al-Sahab releases, with a lot of quotations from the original text. That means they copy directly from the releases or its gist. It is not like what other channels and sites do, copying from news agencies like Reuters, AP and others.

I used to think that MSNBC channel may be good and neutral a bit, but is has lately fired two of the most famous journalists –Keith Olberman and Octavia Nasser the Lebanese – because they released some statements that were open for argument…



CBS channel was mentioned by the Shaykh, I see that it is like the other channels, but it has a famous program (60 Minutes) that has some popularity and a good reputation for its long broadcasting time. Only God knows the reality, as I am not really in a position to do so.

ABC channel is all right; actually it could be one of the best channels, as far as we are concerned. It is interested in al-Qa’ida issues, particularly the journalist Brian Ross, who is specialized in terrorism. The channel is still proud for its interview with the Shaykh. It also broadcasted excerpts from a speech of mine on the fourth anniversary, it also published most of that text on its site on the internet.

The bit about Fox News leaked out a month or so ago, but as far as I know the rest of this is new. Something tells me the folks over at Fox don’t mind that they are media enemy number one as far as Al Qaeda is concerned, nor do they probably mind that they aren’t perceived as “in cooperation” with the U.S. government. That glorious distinction belongs to CNN, which is embarrassing enough. But perhaps even more troubling is Al Qaeda’s praise of their Arabic language channel for essentially re-broadcasting Al Qaeda press releases. Well, they are the “Worldwide Leader in News”…and Al Qaeda propaganda probably draws high ratings in some corners of the world.

ABC was also singled out for a bit of praise, but for the general quality of their journalism. At least that’s how I read this, so they earn a pass in my book.

The real loser of course is MSNBC, which has worked so very hard to align themselves with this Administration. “Cooperation” is not a strong enough word to describe the amount of water-carrying they do for the White House, and the President even swiped their tagline for his re-election campaign. This news must be absolutely devastating for them, but then I guess that’s what they get for firing the most important person in the history of news reading.

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Go west, young man, go west! …Unless you’re into being successful

I seem to recall, not too long ago, California Governor Jerry Brown saying that his state’s policies were about “California leading the country,” which, in turn, could serve as a model for “America potentially leading the world.” Yet again, Gov. Brown has provided an all-too-apt example of how these United States could indeed lead the world: by doing the precise opposite of whatever it is California is doing.

It’s a darn good thing California has all of those beautiful vistas and fantastic recreation to recommend itself, ’cause it doesn’t seem to have much else going for it. In an annual survey, business executives have ranked California as the absolute worst state in the country for doing business for the eighth year in a row:

The survey considered responses from 650 business leaders, who graded states on factors such as taxes, regulations, living environment and more. …



California narrowly edged out New York in what the survey called “the ninth circle of business hell,” sharing the bottom five spots with Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan. …

Its 10.9% unemployment rate is only lower than Nevada’s and Rhode Island’s. A third of U.S. welfare recipients live in California, the report noted. High state taxes and bundles of red tape make operating a business in the state unaffordable to many companies, critics say.

Last year, 254 California companies moved some or all of their work and jobs elsewhere — 26% more than 2010. Most chief executives in Silicon Valley said they won’t expand in the state, according to the survey.

Once the Golden State of opportunity, businesses and residents have more recently been fleeing California’s legislation-happy climes in droves. More than 1.5 million jumped ship between 2001 and 2009, instead moving to more business-friendly locales like the survey’s number-one state, Texas (where unemployment currently sits below the national average — don’t mess).

Try as they might, what with their well-touted forays into subsidized green energy, spectacular feats of nanny-statism and the like, California remains an example of the havoc that ideological mismanagement and over-regulation can wreak on a regional economy. While their heavily left-leaning policies might be able to eke out an existence while dragging down the rest of the nation, their habits aren’t sustainable in the long term, and they’ve got the debt and deficit woes to prove it.

This is exactly why federalism is so brilliant — and why we should cut down on the federal bureaucracy and make better use of it.

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New media gets results: police arrest violent occupier featured in video posted at Breitbart

Kudos to my former co-blogger John Sexton over at Breitbart for flagging this senseless act of violence yesterday morning by an occupy protester in Los Angeles. The protester was caught on tape whacking a female police officer on the back of her head with a drum (video embedded below), and now he’s going to pay the price for his stupidity.

Early Wednesday morning Breitbart News posted a video of an Occupy protester in LA smashing a drum into the head of a female LAPD officer. At the time the video had fewer than 25 views. Within hours the video began to spread around the web on blogs and social media sites. Just over 24 hours later it has been viewed more than 200,000 times.

Yesterday afternoon, KTLA reported that a suspect in the attack had been detained and was being questioned. This morning, the LAPD announced the arrest of Brian Mendoza age 23. Sources say Mendoza is “6 feet tall and weighs 280 pounds.” By contrast, the officer he attacked is said to be 5’1″ and just over 100 pounds.

This isn’t the first time new media has played a role in highlighting threats and acts of violence on the part of occupy protesters which would have otherwise gone unnoticed…and punished. It’s encouraging to see interest on the part of the local media at least to cover a story like this, even if I don’t expect MSNBC to ever give much air time to the darker side of the occupy movement.



Ultimately I think the occupiers are going to have an uphill battle maintaining whatever level of public support they still have, thanks primarily to the efforts of the conservative new media. While only a small number of occupiers may actually commit acts of violence, incidents like these occur with frightening regularity, and they aren’t just isolated to one or two locales either. While no movement should be judged entirely on the basis of its worst elements, these acts are to be expected from a movement whose core membership includes large numbers of anarchists, communists, and other radical leftists agitating against the police. I’m pretty certain most of the 99% they claim to represent are as disgusted by this as we are, and any after-the-fact condemnation by other occupy participants rings hollow with this sort of thing happening over and over again.

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Retail sales slow, service index drops

All eyes will focus tomorrow on the April jobs report, but two more economic indicators hit today that underscores the weakening of the American economy in the spring. Retail sales slowed down, perhaps thanks to a warm winter that shifted demand:

With the early start of spring and Easter behind us, retail sales slowed in April, with many large U.S. retailers falling short of analysts’ estimates.

The Thomson Reuters same-store sales index showed a rise of 0.8 percent for April sales at stores open at least a year, short of analysts’ estimates for an increase of 1.5 percent. Sales in March had risen 4.3 percent.

Retailers were up against tough comparisons last year, when retail sales jumped 9.0 percent, according to Thomson Reuters. Last year, April benefited from Easter, which fell in late April.

Easter didn’t fall all that early in April, though. The holiday hit on the 8th, about midrange for the holiday, and certainly late enough to have pulled most Easter shopping into the same month. Reuters suggests that a better analysis of April would be to include March in the calculations, and that may be true with individual retailers, but less so in the meta-economic sense. March did better than expected at a 4.3% rate of increase, but considering the two together would show a much more tepid rate of increase in the economy — and would tend to obscure the fact that demand has fallen off.

The slowdown extended to the service sector, according to the Institute for Supply Management:

U.S. service companies, which employ roughly 90 percent of the work force, expanded more slowly in April. Companies saw less growth in new orders and hired at a weaker pace.

The Institute for Supply Management said Thursday that its index of non-manufacturing activity dropped to 53.5 last month from 56 in March. Any reading above 50 indicates expansion.



The report contributed to a raft of mixed data that suggests the economy is growing only modestly. …

The latest reading was slightly below the long-run average for the index of 53.9. Still, economists pointed out that the reading showed service companies expanded for the 28th straight month. And the ISM’s manufacturing index, released Tuesday, showed that U.S factory activity grew in April at the fastest pace in 10 months.

The ISM index on manufacturing doesn’t match up to the data in yesterday’s ADP private-sector jobs report. Manufacturing employment dropped by 5,000 jobs, the first time in seven months that happened. We won’t get the April manufacturing reports until later this month, but the March reports on both durable-goods and overall factory orders were abysmal — the worst in three years.

As for 28 straight months of service-sector expansion, that’s better news than the alternative, of course. However, we aren’t seeing the kind of expansion that creates jobs in significant numbers, as I noted earlier in the post on weekly jobless claims and in my column at The Fiscal Times. This is the weak kind of stagnation that has characterized the Obama recovery, and it’s not likely to change while Obama’s policies remain in place.

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Elizabeth Warren: I listed myself as minority in order to make friends “with people who are like I am”

Why didn’t she just say so in the first place? After all, who among us hasn’t wildly exaggerated his/her ethnicity for social purposes? Just last week, I joined an Eskimo book club by claiming that I’m 1/512th Inuit.

By “people who are like I am,” I take it she means … people who are 1/32nd Cherokee?

“I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group something that might happen with people who are like I am. Nothing like that ever happened, that was clearly not the use for it and so I stopped checking it off,” said Warren…

“The only one as I understand it who’s raising any question about whether or not I was qualified for my job is Scott Brown and I think I am qualified and frankly I’m a little shocked to hear anybody raise a question about whether or not I’m qualified to hold a job teaching,” she said, pushing to put Brown on defense. “What does he think it takes for a woman to be qualified?”…

“Being Native American has been part of my story I guess since the day I was born,” said Warren, who never mentioned her Native American heritage on the campaign trail even as she detailed much of her personal history to voters in speeches, statements and a video. “These are my family stories, I have lived in a family that has talked about Native American and talked about tribes since I was a little girl.”

The baseless accusation of sexism against Brown is a nice touch. I thought she’d leave it to her campaign spokesman to shovel shinola like that, but it’s better that she does it herself. If you’re willing to exaggerate your ancestry to claim vicarious racial victimhood, why wouldn’t you smear Scott Brown to claim gender victimhood too?

Riddle me this. If it was all about making Native American friends in order to get in touch with her roots, why’d she keep up the “minority” listing in that professional directory for fully nine years (1986-1995)? She says she stopped checking it off because the hoped-for socializing never happened, but that’s not a conclusion that should take nine years to arrive at. Also, if she was serious enough about discovering her Cherokee ancestry that she’d describe herself as minority in a faculty listing, she must have been reaching out to the Cherokee community in her spare time too. Makes no sense that the professional listing would be her only attempt to befriend this group of people. So what else did she do in that vein? If the answer’s “nothing,” then it becomes awfully hard to believe this was anything more than her way of adding a diversity credential to her CV.



Second look at Martha Coakley?

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Video: Romney rips Obama for handling of Chen standoff

Via the Examiner, if it were anyone else I’d say this is a simple case of a pol from party A putting the screws to a president from party B over a difficult international incident, but with Mitt I’m not sure. He’s been confrontational towards China throughout the campaign. Whether that’s because he sincerely believes confrontation is the way to go to contain Chinese ambitions or because he thinks standing up to the commies (and the post-commies in Moscow) will give him a little Reagan-esque credibility with the base, I don’t know. I’m not knocking him for hitting O on this — any nominee would — but I find it hard to believe he’d have done anything starkly different than what The One did. A president’s not going to let one gutsy dissident jeopardize his entire foreign policy on Asia.

Speaking of the gutsy dissident, here’s what he said early this morning:

Q: If you knew everything you know now, would you have left the U.S. Embassy?

I don’t think I would have.

Q: Do you feel that U.S. officials put pressure on you to leave the embassy as early as possible in order that today’s talks should be a success?

I think that was a factor.

And here’s a more hopeful-sounding Chen this afternoon:

“I hope the Sino-US agreement can be implemented,” he said. “I am not disappointed in the US government. They made such a great effort. I am very grateful. It was under their great efforts that I got this important agreement.”…

Some media reports have suggested he was unsatisfied with the deal. Chen called it a “breakthrough” in his conversation with USA TODAY.

“The Chinese government has promised to guarantee my civil liberties. Is this not a breakthrough? But its implementation is very important. It must be fully implemented and this has not happened yet,” he said.

What happened in the interim to brighten his mood? No way to know for sure, but he told the Daily Beast that a U.S. official had come to the hospital this morning to try to see him (and had been refused). Knowing that the State Department hasn’t abandoned him entirely means he can rest easy that Chinese goons won’t drag him and his wife into a back alley and beat them to death — yet. As his lawyer said, with dark understatement, “The Chinese government has made many promises on many things, but they never keep their promises.” (In that case, why did Chen believe that they’d uphold their end of the deal with the U.S. to let him attend law school?)

Hillary’s playing this close to the vest so far in her official remarks, presumably in order not to further inflame the situation, but she and O are now in a nasty bind. Chen insists that the only way he’ll be safe is if he’s given asylum in the U.S.; the ChiComs, I assume, will refuse that categorically for fear of losing face. What would Mitt Romney do? As further reading on this, check out the NYT’s account of how this guy, blind and injured during his escape, somehow made it to the U.S. embassy. He didn’t show up at the gate begging to be let in, as I think most people assume. The State Department was contacted by his allies after he escaped and the U.S. sent a car to pick him up. Allegedly they were tailed by Chinese security and a full-fledged car chase ensued on the way back to the embassy. All of which is to say, the U.S. was a more willing participant in guaranteeing his safety than might at first appear, which is to O’s credit but also makes this standoff even more tense. Stay tuned. Exit question: Does the State Department now regret its initial decision to help? From the Daily Beast:


Fu had spoken by phone with Chen shortly before I had. “He was very heavyhearted,” Fu said. “He was crying when we spoke. He said he was under enormous pressure to leave the embassy. Some people almost made him feel he was being a huge burden to the U.S.” Chen decided to leave, Fu confirmed, because he was told “he would have no chance of reunification with his wife and children if he didn’t. The choice presented to him was walk out—or stay inside and lose his wife and kids. Chen had no choice but to go.”

Update: High drama: Apparently Chen himself called into today’s emergency committee hearing on Capitol Hill about his fate.

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Alec Baldwin: Let’s face it, it looks like Obama has this election in the bag

Via Newsbusters. New poll out from PPP: With Gary Johnson running as a libertarian, Romney’s lead over Obama is down to two — in Montana. Meanwhile, over at Survey USA, Obama’s got a cushy four-point lead against Romney — in North Carolina.

Alternate headline: “Blogger drinking in the daytime again.”

ALEC BALDWIN: Well, you know, things for these guys aren’t going that well. You know the, the economy may stumble. It probably won’t stumble that badly between now and the election. For those people who look at these very handy benchmarks like the Dow, the Dow is still staying pretty well above 13,000. Which that kind of crowd of Romney’s really, really goes for. It’s the anniversary of this president getting Osama Bin Laden. And I think that the Republicans, I think that Romney, these guys are really, really getting scared. They really, they thought to themselves, after a tough primary – and they spent a lot of money on a bloody primary. It’s been a very ugly primary. I was one of the people that said very quickly that all Obama needs to do for the first month of the general election is just show clips of [Newt] Gingrich’s remarks about Romney. Just keep showing clips of Gingrich talking about Romney, in order to really, really get people off that.


Over at Nate Silver’s site, guestblogger John Sides has an interesting bunch of graphs suggesting that Obama’s more popular than he should be. What’s that mean? Well, they took 60 years of quarterly presidential job approval numbers, factored in economic data, scandals, wars, and time in office, and came up with a rough assessment of what any given president’s job approval “should” have been for a particular quarter. Funny thing about The One: Given the protracted crappiness of Obamanomics, he overperforms. A lot.

In fact, he is more popular than expected, and consistently so throughout these three years. His quarterly approval ratings are, on average, nine points higher than expected…

Only two other presidents have experienced a discrepancy between expected and actual approval in their first terms that was larger than the discrepancy in Mr. Obama’s first three years. One was George W. Bush, and this arises largely because the model doesn’t fully anticipate the quickness and size of the “rally effect” that took place after Sept. 11, 2001. The other was Ronald Reagan, whose first-term approval ratings exhibited more fluctuation than Mr. Obama’s but were about 10 points above the model’s expectations, on average.

Sides offers two possible explanations that I’ve flagged here before, more than once — personal likability plus the fact that, even now, a lot of voters out there still blame Bush for the state of the economy more than O. Some readers grumbled at me the last time I mentioned the likability gap between Obama and Romney on grounds that The One simply isn’t that likable and that personal appeal is wildly overrated when voters buckle down in October and do some hard thinking about whether they want four more years of this. I agree that few will vote for O simply because they like him more, but likability may skew their critical judgments of his policies just enough for swing voters to give him the benefit of the doubt on a second-term economic recovery, meaningful deficit reduction, etc. That is to say, likability and the “blame Bush” phenomenon aren’t completely distinct factors. Some people may be more inclined to blame Bush because they like Obama personally. Which, of course, is why his campaign is spending time doing moronic “slow jam the news” segments on Jimmy Fallon. No one with an ego the size of Obama’s wants to spend three minutes playing straight man to a late-night B-lister, but if it helps widen the likability gap, he’ll grin and bear it. (The Obama campaign’s obsession with the Seamus story is the flip side of this, of course.)

Exit question: Is that Survey USA poll trustworthy? Follow the link up top and you’ll find this in the crosstabs:

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Chen: I can’t help feeling like the U.S. lied to me “a little”

I’ve been following this story all day since Ed’s post this morning and I still can’t keep straight what happened. According to Chen, the U.S. told him his wife would be beaten to death if he didn’t leave the embassy, which makes it sound like he was all but forced to go and left to the mercy of the ChiComs. According to the State Department, no such thing happened. Or did it?

An American official denied that account. The official said Mr. Chen was told that his wife, Yuan Weijing, who had been brought to Beijing by the Chinese authorities while Mr. Chen was in the American Embassy, would not be allowed to remain in the capital unless Mr. Chen left the embassy to see her. She would be sent back to Mr. Chen’s home village in Shandong, where no one could guarantee her safety.

“At no time did any U.S. official speak to Chen about physical or legal threats to his wife and children. Nor did Chinese officials make any such threats to us,” Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokesperson, said in an e-mailed statement. “U.S. interlocutors did make clear that if Chen elected to stay in the Embassy, Chinese officials had indicated to us that his family would be returned to Shandong, and they would lose their opportunity to negotiate for reunification.”…

“At no point during his time in the Embassy did Chen ever request political asylum in the U.S.,” Ms. Nuland said. “At every opportunity, he expressed his desire to stay in China, reunify with his family, continue his education and work for reform in his country. All our diplomacy was directed at putting him in the best possible position to achieve his objectives.”

That sounds like a distinction without a difference. If China was prepared to send his wife back to the village without security, that’s tantamount to saying her life would be in danger if he didn’t leave the embassy. Meanwhile, the NYT claims the deal reached between the Americans and Chinese would allow Chen to relocate to a port city east of Beijing with his family and enroll in school to study law. I’m not sure what the status of that is right now — did the Chinese really agree? is it still in the works? — but Chen himself is dubious enough about it that suddenly he wants out, out, out:

“The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me at the hospital,” he said. “But this afternoon, as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone.”

He said he was “very disappointed” in the U.S. government and felt “a little” that he had been lied to by the embassy.

At the hospital, where he was reunited with his family, he said he learned that his wife had been badly treated after his escape.


“She was tied to a chair by police for two days,” he said. “Then they carried thick sticks to our house, threatening to beat her to death. Now they have moved into the house. They eat at our table and use our stuff. Our house is teeming with security — on the roof and in the yard. They installed seven surveillance cameras inside the house and built electric fences around the yard.”

He looked reasonably cheerful in photos with U.S. officials after the deal was made. Then, just a few hours later, he told CNN, “We are in danger. If you can talk to Hillary, I hope she can help my whole family leave China.” The most logical explanation for the sudden turnabout is that China reneged on its deal with the U.S. once they had Chen back in custody, but that would be a huge betrayal at a moment when Hillary’s in the country for talks on a variety of issues. I guess it’s possible that the State Department really did lie to him about the deal to get him out the front door of the embassy, on the theory that preserving good relations between the U.S. and China is more important than saving one dissident from Beijing’s police state. That’s hard to believe, though. If it’s true, it would destroy O’s credibility as a bulwark against China among the Far Eastern nations he’s been courting lately. And if someone in the Department leaked to the media about it, it’d be a huge domestic embarrassment for him and serious campaign artillery for Romney and the GOP. In fact, here’s Boehner’s statement this afternoon hammering O even at a moment when events are in flux:

“Like millions of other Americans, I have followed the story of Chen Guangcheng with admiration for his courage and concern for his safety and that of his family. I am deeply disturbed by the most recent report by the Associated Press, which suggests Chen Guangcheng was pressured to leave the U.S. embassy against his will amid flimsy promises and possible threats of harm to his family. In such a situation, the United States has an obligation to stand with the oppressed, not with the oppressor. Having handed Chen Guangcheng back over to the Chinese government, the Obama administration is responsible for ensuring his safety. While our economic relationship with China is important and vital to the future of people in both countries, the United States has an obligation to use its engagement with China to press for reforms in China’s human rights practices, particularly with respect to the reprehensible ‘one-child’ policy.”

Maybe the State Department calculated that, however horrible it might be to fool Chen into returning to Chinese custody, they had to do it to make sure there won’t be other episodes like this. Realistically, China’s not going to agree to let an infinite number of dissidents apply for asylum in the U.S. It’d be too embarrassing to the regime if its prominent critics started fleeing to its chief rival instead of embracing the ChiCom system. They don’t want to have to deal with this situation again and again and again. But then, neither does the U.S. — it’s too risky for relations with Beijing — and so maybe the terrible decision was made to dissuade other dissidents from thinking they could find safe haven at the embassy by making sure Chen didn’t come out too far ahead this time. I hope that’s not what happened, but I don’t know. Foreign policy is a slimy business.

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Is Obama winning the election by feeding the media lots of dumb distractions?

Philip Klein says yes, Ace says he doesn’t know, I’m saying nope.

How did we reach the point where I’m the optimist in the righty blogosphere?

Since [April 10], three stories have dominated the political news cycle. The first came when Hilary Rosen, a Democratic operative, said Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life.” The next came when the Romney campaign promoted a Daily Caller story recounting that Obama had eaten dog as a child in Indonesia. The most recent came as Obama decided to spike the football before the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s killing, releasing an ad suggesting Romney wouldn’t have made the same call.

In all of these cases, the Romney campaign has taken the bait, reacting to whatever Team Obama has decided to make an issue…

While these stories continued to dominate the political headlines, negative economic news poured in. Just in the past week, the Commerce Department reported that the pace of economic growth slowed to an anemic 2.2 percent in the first quarter and payroll processor ADP reported the private sector added just 119,000 jobs in April, far lower than expectations. The Labor Department releases its monthly report Friday…

If the campaign is about bin Laden, identity politics and silly controversies about dogs, an Obama victory is a lot more likely. To seize control of the campaign, instead of merely being reactive, Romney has to put Obama on the defensive about his own record.

Actually, it’s because I’m pessimistic about voters’ attention spans and ideological priorities that I’m optimistic about Romney’s chances in this dumb distraction derby that we’ve been having lately. My hunch is that the 10 percent of the public that’s going to decide the election doesn’t start paying attention until the conventions in late August and then doesn’t really buckle down until the first presidential debate in early October. All of this crap about Hilary Rosen and the dog on the car roof may help very marginally — you never know what an undecided voter might pick up in his/her half-hour of news-watching per day — but I think it’s mostly makework for the campaigns and chum for political junkies. That’s why I go over the top with expressions of worry in my silly posts about early polls: Those polls are completely meaningless right now but they’re tasty chum so we have to pretend like they’re somehow worth talking about. Needless to say, the election will be decided by what GDP growth and the unemployment rate look like circa October 1, not by who’s leading by three points in Virginia today. In fact, I put so much stock in the economy as a deciding factor in the election that sometimes I think it almost doesn’t matter what Romney’s own economic message is. And maybe he thinks so too:


“My vision for America is very different than this president’s vision,” said Romney, who spoke on the floor of Exhibit Edge, a female-run company that specializes in making signage for trade shows.

“What he’s done over the last three and a half years is install a series of policies that have made it back-breaking for many small businesses,” said Romney. “And made it harder for our economy to reboot and put people back to work. What I would do, people ask me what would you to get the economy going and I say, well look at what the president’s done, and do the opposite.”

That’s a lame soundbite but it works as a summary of the “referendum” nature of this election: Do something different. If the economy looks sufficiently crappy five months from now that swing voters come to that conclusion, he’ll win regardless of whatever else is happening. To the extent any of the recent distractions matter, I think they matter chiefly in how they affect the “likability gap” between Obama and Romney. Rosen suggests that Ann Romney’s too rich to appreciate the hardships of raising a family; liberals make hay of Romney’s “weirdness” in putting Seamus in the kennel on the car roof; even O’s Bin Laden ad, which dealt with a bona fide policy matter, was chiefly about suggesting that Romney’s too gutless to make the call on OBL that Obama did. All of it’s aimed at creating a sour caricature of Romney for low-information voters which some of them may pick up on as a general impression of him, and which may end up informing their judgments of the policy merits of both sides later on when they start paying attention. That being so, Romney might as well fight back and try to turn the distractions against O. The Rosen attack quickly backfired and put her on the defensive; the Seamus thing became a springboard for righty jokes about Obama’s dog-eating; and the Bin Laden ad led to a round of criticism for The One about politicizing counterterrorism. By making these distractions about Obama and the left instead of Romney, it makes it less likely that the takeaway for low-information voters who are half-paying attention will be the caricature of Romney intended by the White House. And without that caricature, they’ll cast a less forgiving eye at bad economic news from Obamanomics a few months from now.

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Obama on oil speculators: “That’s not the way the market should work.” Er, actually…

In all of his class-warmongering glory, President Obama is fond of perpetuating the (intellectually cheap, populist) notion that the activities of the financial class are somehow a zero-sum game. In his eyes, wily and undeservedly affluent business executives only secure their ill-begotten profits at the expense of the little guy, instead of the reality in which everyone is, in fact, better off as a result of the economic growth that comes part and parcel of their actions. Speculators, and oil speculators in particular, get the especially short end of the stick:The president’s painfully deliberate misrepresentations of his energy policy aside, his insistence that there is no “silver bullet” to bring down energy prices and that “drill, baby, drill” is a slogan only good for a bumper sticker… isn’t really accurate. No, approving the Keystone pipeline or immediately issuing more offshore drilling permits mightn’t flood the available supply with oil directly from those projects for several years to come, but it may result in speculators currently holding onto oil, in anticipation of higher prices later, to instead release it up for sale today.

Speculation is indeed a huge part of any commodities market, but hand-rubbing CEOs aren’t the only ones who benefit from it — even normal, everyday Americans like to grow their own personal wealth through investments in the futures market. The beauty of the free enterprise system is that it’s just a collection of information, translated into prices through trading, and speculators do their best to hedge risk and predict price movements — in the face of the global demand trends and the volatility in the Middle East that the president mentions. Really now, speculators ain’t all that bad, and frankly, targeting them as merely greedy capitalists for short-term political gain isn’t doing anyone any favors (note the president’s Enron reference, gently suggesting that all of this is illicit, eeevil activity).

The chairman of the world’s largest futures exchange recently had some choice words on President Obama’s crusade to punish oil speculation:

Two weeks after President Barack Obama blamed speculators, traders who wager on the future direction of commodity prices, for driving fuel prices higher and urged regulators to be tougher on them, Terry Duffy, the executive chairman of exchange operator CME Group Inc., hit back with a pointed explanation of investors’ role in financial markets.

“People need to study their facts before criticizing speculators,” Mr. Duffy, whose Chicago company is the largest futures exchange by volume, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Milken Institute’s Global Conference. He argued that speculators provide vital liquidity to a host of markets.

Last month, the president accused “speculators” of rigging the oil markets, pushing up fuel prices for ordinary Americans. “Rising gas prices means a rough ride for a lot of families,” he said in a speech at the White House. “We can’t afford a situation where speculators artificially manipulate markets by buying up oil, creating the perception of a shortage and driving prices higher, only to flip the oil for a quick profit.”

Mr. Duffy dismissed the criticism, saying that speculators play an important part in financial markets. “When the Dow goes above 13000, Google goes above $600 per share and everybody celebrates, who do you think did that? The U.S. equity market is 100% speculators,” he said.

Mr. Duffy pointed out that the derivatives markets also help the Treasury Department and American taxpayers to save money on the cost of sovereign debt by allowing traders to hedge risks on Treasurys.

Politicians targeting oil speculators is nothing new, just a popular theme that reemerges whenever gas prices start to rise. President Obama’s latest proposed crackdown on speculators is all just a part of the White House’s larger narrative that us dumb consumers need the federal government to “protect us” from the malfeasance of the big, bad financial class, re: Dodd Frank, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, etcetera. Oh, big government — whatever would we do without you?

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Gallup: Catholic vote a tossup, 46/46

In 2008, Barack Obama won the Catholic vote by nine points, 54/45, over John McCain on his way to a seven-point victory in the national popular vote. Three months after announcing the HHS mandate that would force religious hospitals, schools, and charities to fund contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients, Obama has lost that edge among the tens of millions of Catholic voters. A new Gallup poll shows Obama in a dead heat with Mitt Romney, at just about the same level as McCain got in 2008:

Catholic voters in the United States are evenly split in their support for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for president, mirroring the national trend. However, Hispanic Catholics — about 18% of the total group of Catholic voters — are overwhelmingly likely to support Obama over Romney, while a majority of non-Hispanic white Catholics support Romney.

Obama led Romney by one percentage point, 46% to 45%, among the more than 8,000 registered voters interviewed as part of Gallup Daily tracking conducted April 11-30. Among the 1,915 Catholics interviewed during that time, support for Obama and Romney was almost the same, with 46% support for Obama and 46% for Romney.

Catholics’ divided preferences at this point contrast with those of the largest religious group in the country, Protestants, whose support swings to Romney by 51% to 41%. The split in Catholics’ preferences also differs from the choice among those who identify with another religion or no religion at all, a group that clearly supports Obama, by 58% to 33%.

The Protestant vote is going to be a problem for Obama, too. He lost Protestants to McCain by the same numbers, 45/54. However, the difference in both numbers is that Obama is a known quantity this time, unlike in 2008. Those who remain undecided now are much less likely to break towards the incumbent. Romney already has a ten-point lead among Protestants, and could easily stretch it out to the mid-teens by Election Day. Protestants made up 54% of the electorate in 2008, and it’s probably a safe bet that they’ll turn out even stronger in 2012.

Obama won despite the disadvantage mainly because of his strength among Catholics. Gallup tries to soften the blow by noting that Obama does very well among Hispanic Catholics, 70/20, but they are only about 18% of the bloc. Obama is deeply unpopular among non-Hispanic Catholics, 38/55. Whatever else happens, the Catholic vote won’t come to Obama’s rescue in 2012 as it did in 2008.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops have not relented one iota on the issue of the HHS mandate, which means these numbers won’t be improving any time soon. That may even start having an impact on Obama’s lead among Hispanic Catholics. Obama will have to defend this intrusion on religious expression, thanks to the USCCB’s energetic attacks, but the administration will have to do better than this: In sworn testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that her general counsel did not write a legal memo explaining the religious freedom issues in the birth control mandate. During the same line of questioning, Sebelius also admitted to being unfamiliar with several important Supreme Court religious freedom cases.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said that he knew of only three tests that the Supreme Court has used to balance a constitutionally protected freedom against a policy goal. He described those three tests and then asked Sebelius last Thursday, “Which of those three constitutional balancing tests were you making reference to when you said you ‘balanced’ things?”

“Congressman, I’m not a lawyer and I don’t pretend to understand the nuances of the constitutional balancing tests,” Sebelius answered.

“Before this rule was promulgated, did you read any of the Supreme Court cases on religious liberty?” Gowdy later asked.



Sebelius answered that she did not.

Chris Cillizza and Rachel Weiner underscore the importance of this bloc:

As Gallup’s Frank Newport notes in a memo on the findings, Catholics have historically been a Democratic-leaning constituency — the party can thank John F. Kennedy for that one — but in recent decades have become more of a toss-up voting bloc.

The eight presidential elections reveal how up for grabs Catholics truly. The Republican nominee has carried Catholics four times, the Democratic nominee has carried Catholics four times. …

Keep an eye on the Catholic vote between now and November. How it goes will tell you a lot about who is going to be the next president.

And as long as the bishops maintain the fight against the Obama administration — and they defend the mandate so badly — it won’t be Obama who wins this bloc.

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So … is Occupy officially a joke now?

Well, around here they’ve always been a joke, but yesterday’s May Day performances probably cinched that reputation. Earlier today, I taped a segment for the Tom Sullivan Show on Fox Business that will air on Saturday, and the consensus opinion was that the movement ran out of steam — or, rather, that the movement boiled back down to the professional anarchist and whiner classes that have been conducting these kinds of protests for at least the last 13 years, ever since the WTO riots in Seattle, Washington.

These days, they’re not even trying. Breitbart captured this video of May Day protesters that, er, didn’t know what they were protesting. Most of them didn’t even speak the same language as the signs they held:They’re outsourcing protests over a lack of jobs? How ironic.

But what do I know? I’m not hip to all you young cats. What does a more culturally simpatico publication think — like, say, The Village Voice? They pretty much think it’s a joke, too:

We witnessed several of Tuesday’s May Day festivities. While not everyone involved in the demonstrations were “bums” (which we pointed out in a post yesterday), the media’s take doesn’t seem to be too far off — it’s hard to take many of these people seriously when they’re are biting cops, dumping buckets of feces in public places, and strolling around New York in Halloween costumes.


As Susan Ostrowski, a 55-year-old woman who works at a Wall Street insurance company, suggests, it seems some of the occupiers would be better served by “find[ing] jobs and protest[ing] on their time off. They should get involved politically, register to vote rather than sitting and sleeping on the steps in sleeping bags.”

As we mentioned yesterday, not all of the occupiers are unemployed hobos. Unfortunately, the non-unemployed hobos involved with Occupy Wall Street get lumped in with the “bums” because the “bums” and their antics get the most ink in the press.

That’s because they’re the only novelty left in the “movement.” Besides, what else do you call people who won’t get a job, sleep in the streets, panhandle and complain? “Bums” sounds about right to me.

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Romney catches Obama in Quinnipiac swing-state polls

Ah, it’s good to be in full general-campaign mode, isn’t it? Instead of having to play three-dimensional chess with polling numbers, with the head-to-head figures having to be calculated through the prism of a contested primary on one side, we’re now entering into the clarity phase of polling. Mitt Romney has just begun to unite Republicans behind him, while Barack Obama has had an uncontested primary season, so the advantage still goes to Obama in polling — and that’s what has to be worrying Team Obama with the Quinnipiac polls from three swing states:

Riding the voter perception that he is as good as or better than President Barack Obama at fixing the economy, Republican challenger Mitt Romney catches up with the president in Florida and Ohio, two critical swing states, while the president opens an 8-point lead in Pennsylvania, according to a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll released today.

This compares to the results of a March 28 Swing State Poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University showing President Obama ahead of Gov. Romney 49 – 42 percent in Florida, 47 – 41 percent in Ohio and 45 – 42 percent in Pennsylvania. …

Matching Obama against Romney in each of these key states – no one has won the White House since 1960 without carrying at least two of them – shows:

Florida: Romney with 44 percent to Obama’s 43 percent, too close to call;
Ohio: Obama with 44 percent to Romney’s 42 percent, too close to call;
Pennsylvania: Obama tops Romney 47 – 39 percent.


What is the one constant in each of these polls? Obama the incumbent can’t get to 50% in any of these states. In Florida and Ohio, Obama can’t even get to 45%. Pennsylvania has a double-digit Democratic advantage in party registration and Obama can’t get to a majority. Those are not re-elect numbers in any of these three states.

Losing Florida and Ohio would be a big problem for Obama. Losing Pennsylvania would be a disaster. Obama is still a long way from losing the state, but it’s exactly the kind of blue-collar, Rust Belt, working-class Catholic state that he will have problems holding. Democrats who lose Pennsylvania in presidential elections are called authors by January, and the Democrats know this well. They will have to shift considerable amounts of time and money to protect Obama in the Keystone State that could have gone elsewhere … like, say, Florida and Ohio, which are critical states for Republicans. And if Obama is having these kinds of problems in Pennsylvania, he’ll lose Indiana and could possibly lose Wisconsin and Virginia as well.

National Journal notes that the rise in Romney’s strength comes from a perception of economic stagnation that’s not likely to change in the next few months:

Romney’s rise in two of the three critical states is fueled by voters’ perceptions of the economy. Voters in Florida and Ohio think the former Massachusetts governor would do a better job with the economy, while Pennsylvania voters are split evenly on the question. And only a slight majority of voters in each state thinks the economy is beginning to recover.

The demographic composition is another problem. The D/R/I in Florida is 31/28/37, in Ohio 34/26/34, and in Pennsylvania 36/29/30. Only Pennsylvania’s looks remotely predictive. The CNN exit polls in 2008 — a banner year for Obama — put Florida at 37/34/29, Ohio at 39/31/30, and Pennsylvania at 44/37/18. In 2010, Florida was even-up at 36/36/28, while Ohio was 36/37/28 and Pennsylvania at 40/37/23. Republicans are consistently underweighted in these Q-polls. Obama is probably in even more trouble than the numbers above indicate.

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NYT: Romney campaign overlooked Grenell’s controversial Twitter postings when they vetted him

I’ve been wondering for two days why they’d hire him and then immediately tell him to lie low when they already knew that he was gay and a bit of a troll on Twitter. Mystery solved: They didn’t know he was a bit of a troll on Twitter. Which, for a campaign that “closely monitors” political tweets for purposes of rapid response, is simply bizarre.

“[B]efore he left the Romney headquarters [after his job interview], he felt compelled to say that he is gay. “It could be an issue,” he volunteered.

“It’s not an issue for us,” Mr. Fehrnstrom replied firmly.

The campaign called around to Mr. Grenell’s colleagues, seeking references, but as the warm reviews flowed in, a campaign known for its no-stone-unturned meticulousness overlooked his electronic footprints: namely, dozens of cutting Twitter postings. One swipe at Newt Gingrich’s weight, for example, went like this: “I wonder if newt has investments in Lipitor.”…

As the critiques from conservatives [over his orientation] intensified, Mr. Grenell pressed senior aides to allow him to speak about national security issues, arguing that the best way to soothe the ire over his appointment would be to let him do his job: defend his boss and take swipes at President Obama.

But Mr. Romney’s advisers balked at the idea of his taking a public role, saying that the best way to get beyond the controversy was for Mr. Grenell to lower his profile until it blew over. A big worry: that reporters would ask Mr. Grenell about his Twitter feed or sexuality, turning him rather than Mr. Romney’s foreign policy into the story.



Team Mitt wanted to deal with the controversy by keeping him quiet until people got bored with it and Grenell wanted to deal with it by changing the subject with a talking-points offensive about foreign policy. Sounds like he was insulted by the campaign’s approach and chose to bow out instead — even though, per the Times, no fewer than six top Romney officials personally asked him to stay, including Fehrnstrom and campaign manager Matt Rhoades. One advisor tells the Times that for the campaign Grenell’s orientation “was a nonissue. But they didn’t want to confront the religious right.” But … if they were unwilling to confront the religious right, why did they (a) hire Grenell to begin with, (b) beg him to stay on, and (c) repeatedly state their respect for him after he resigned? Obviously they planned to use him as a spokesman soon, just not as soon as Grenell would have liked. I’m not defending their decision to muzzle him at the beginning, mind you — I think Grenell’s approach on how to deal with the criticism was much smarter — but the media keeps trying to fit this easily into a cookie-cutter “Romney bows to anti-gay critics of Grenell” narrative and it’s not that simple. A fairer criticism is that the campaign simply should have showed more nerve up front and let Grenell speak, especially considering that not all of his critics were actually demanding that he be fired. HuffPo:

Gary Bauer, the founder of American Values, became the most serious political figure on the Christian right to publicly criticize Grenell’s hiring. Bauer wrote in a letter to supporters that he worried that Grenell’s hiring might signal some support by Romney for gay marriage. But he added, “We should not exaggerate this. Homosexuals were part of the Reagan Administration and the Bush Administrations. Our concern is policy.”

In a Wednesday interview with HuffPost, Bauer said, “I never called for [Grenell] to be replaced and I think the most important thing here is the policies.”…

The Romney campaign told Grenell to “be quiet and not to speak up until it went away,” said a source familiar with the matter, referring to criticism of his sexual orientation. A source close to the Romney campaign said Grenell was asked to lay low only on the issue of his tweets about Callista Gingrich and First Lady Michele Obama, for which he, in fact, had already apologized.

I’m not sure it’s a cataclysmic setback for gays when the Republican nominee hires an openly gay spokesman who later resigns and even a top social conservative feels obliged to say, essentially, “Hey, gays have worked for the GOP forever. No need to go running off.” Note that last bit about the Callista and Michelle tweets, though. It’s hard to believe that those were the only things the campaign was worried about but it’s easy to believe that they were legitimately worried about them once they found out. Romney’s trying to unify the party right now, and having pissy comments about Gingrich’s wife from his new foreign-policy spokesman circulating in the media would have been unhelpful to that effort. Maybe they feared that if they put Grenell out there right now while the media was still focused on it, the story might blow up so big that Newt would feel obliged to withhold an endorsement or to hit back hard rhetorically. Mitt doesn’t want hard feelings now among any constituency, even one that only managed to win two states. So their concern about the tweets was legit, I think, even if it wasn’t the foremost controversy surrounding Grenell

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Krauthammer: Be prepared for the most divisive campaign ever

Even before this week’s economic indicators, the Obama campaign had signaled that it would do anything to distract voters from the economic malaise of Obamanomics. After today’s jobs report, that job will become tougher — but don’t expect Team Obama to change their strategy. In fact, as Charles Krauthammer rightly observes, Barack Obama and his administration has spent much of its time shaping the battlefield for the most divisive presidential election in history:

The entire Obama campaign is a slice-and-dice operation, pandering to one group after another, particularly those that elected Obama in 2008 — blacks, Hispanics, women, young people — and for whom the thrill is now gone.

What to do? Try fear. Create division, stir resentment, by whatever means necessary — bogus court challenges, dead-end Senate bills and a forest of straw men.

Why else would the Justice Department challenge the photo ID law in Texas? To charge Republicans with seeking to disenfranchise Hispanics and blacks, of course. But in 2008 the Supreme Court upheld a similar law from Indiana. And it wasn’t close: 6 to 3, the majority including the venerated liberal John Paul Stevens.

Moreover, photo IDs were recommended by the 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by Jimmy Carter. And you surely can’t get into the attorney general’s building without one. Are Stevens, Carter and Eric Holder anti-Hispanic and anti-black?

The ethnic bases covered, we proceed to the “war on women.” It sprang to public notice when a 30-year-old student at an elite law school (starting private-sector salary upon graduation: $160,000) was denied the inalienable right to have the rest of the citizenry (as co-insured and/or taxpayers — median household income: $52,000) pay for her contraception.

Despite a temporary setback — Hilary Rosen’s hastily surrendered war on moms — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will resume the battle with a Paycheck Fairness Act that practically encourages frivolous lawsuits and has zero chance of passage.


All of these will appear at some point in the next six months as campaign ads. We saw a bit of a preview of that in yesterday’s “Julia” rollout, which extolled all of the benefits of government dependency, while addressing none of its costs. It also says nothing about Obama’s economic policies or the stagnation they have produced instead of a robust recovery. Team Obama can’t address the economy without addressing their failures, which is why they will try to change the subject as often as possible.

The life cycle of a single mom certainly plays up the “war on women” meme, but even that is a bit of a tell. What has the Obama campaign so worried about the female vote? Normally they win that demographic anyway, and we can expect single women to break rather significantly towards Democrats as they always do. The full-court press on the “war on women” demonstrates that the Obama campaign is worried about losing among married women in a big way — maybe even starting t hit a stage of panic over it. Women, however, care about the economy just as much as men do, and most of them have no trouble getting their own contraception when they want it. They will want the same answers on economic policy as men do, as Hispanics do, and as left-handed Finns from Poughkeepsie do. Slicing and dicing demographics won’t allow Obama to hide from the stagnation created by Obamanomics for very long.

The RNC points out the inconvenient truths behind Obama’s “Hype and Blame” campaignVoters might be easily distracted over the summer, but the political bill for three years of economic stagnation comes due in the fall, and all of these distractions won’t keep Obama from paying the price.

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The Ed Morrissey Show: Week in Review with Duane “Generalissimo” Patterson

Today, on the Ed Morrissey Show (3 pm ET), we’ll take a look at the past week with Duane “Generalissimo” Patterson of the Hugh Hewitt Show. Duane and I will discuss all of the week’s top stories, play with the new soundboard toy, and race to be first with the Albert Pujols reference. All of this and more — and stay tuned for a preview of tonight’s Hugh Hewitt Show.

The Ed Morrissey Show and its dynamic chatroom can be seen on the permanent TEMS page — be sure to join us, and don’t forget to keep up with the debate on my Facebook page, too!

Marizela Perez has been missing for a year.

Marizela’s case has a connection here at Hot Air, as she is the cousin of the Boss Emeritus, Michelle Malkin. Michelle is trying to spread the word through Facebook and Q13Fox/KCPQ in Seattle. We want to encourage prayers for Marizela’s family, and also try to reach anyone in the area who knows where Marizela might be and ask them to contact the police.

The search has its own website now, Find Marizela, for the latest in the efforts to bring Marizela home. There is also a fund for the family to keep the search efforts going. Be sure to check there and at Michelle’s site for further developments, and keep the family in your prayers.

America’s Most Wanted is now on the case, too.


Michelle has a new update on the case on the one-year anniversary:

Exactly one year ago today, my 18-year-old cousin Marizela (known affectionately to her family and friends as “Emem” or “Mei”) Perez disappeared from the University of Washington campus in Seattle.

She is still missing.

Those words form on the computer screen with disembodied disbelief. But my heart is screaming:

SHE IS STILL MISSING. WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY?!!!!!

The not-knowing is every parent’s worst nightmare. It brought normal life to a standstill for Marizela’s parents, Edgar and Jasmin. And yet, they have to keep living and working and praying for their only daughter. Because that is what they must do. Their strength and dignity through all the suffering has been an inspiration to me.

There have been no new developments in Emem’s case. No word from the police or the medical examiner’s office. No activity on her bank accounts or social media accounts.

And no response from the Google legal department to our request for help in January.

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CBS: House Oversight Committee to take first steps on contempt charge against Holder on Fast & Furious

The fight between House Republicans, the Department of Justice, and the White House over Operation Fast and Furious will escalate this morning, according to CBS News. The House Oversight Committee will take the first steps to charging Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt of Congress over continued stonewalling of demands for documentation and testimony on the disastrous ATF operation that led to the death of at least one Border Patrol agent and hundreds of people in Mexico:Fox News reports that Oversight chair Darrell Issa has begun distributing a draft contempt citation:

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa has circulated a lengthy pair of documents making the case for holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over his “refusal” to cooperate in an investigation of the ill-fated Fast and Furious operation.

Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Thursday sent to every member of his committee a 64-page draft contempt order against Holder as well as a 17-page memo outlining the history of the scandal.


“Operation Fast and Furious’ outrageous tactics, the Justice Department’s refusal to fully cooperate with the investigation and efforts to smear and retaliate against whistleblowers have tainted the institutional integrity of the Justice Department,” Issa wrote.

According to Fox, Issa won’t call for a vote on the charge — yet. The draft states that the committee has subpoenaed documents in 22 categories, and that Holder and the DoJ have yet to produce a single document in 12 of 22 categories. The question will be whether Issa can get the votes to take this next step, but it’s doubtful that Issa would have begun circulating a draft if he didn’t feel comfortable with his position.

A release from the Oversight Committee details the specifics:

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has distributed a staff briefing paper and draft of the contempt of Congress resolution against Attorney General Eric Holder to Members of the Oversight Committee. The briefing paper explains what happened in Operation Fast and Furious, the hardships faced by the family of fallen Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in getting truthful answers about his death, how agents who blew the whistle on the reckless operation have faced retaliation, and the carnage in Mexico that Fast and Furious has helped fuel.

“This briefing paper and draft contempt report explains the case, to both Members of the Committee and the American people, for holding Attorney General Holder in contempt of Congress,” said Issa. “In describing the results of the Justice Department’s refusal to cooperate – including the hardships the family of a fallen Border Patrol agent have faced in seeking the truth, and retaliation against agents who blew the whistle on gunwalking – this briefing paper provides the facts, on which decisions will be made.”

Highlights of the briefing paper include:

On information sharing failures (p.6):
“When [firearms trafficking syndicate ringleader] Celis-Acosta informed ATF of the names of the two cartel contacts for whom he had been working, agents quickly came to learn that these two U.S.-based cartel contacts were already known to the Department of Justice … In exchange for one associate’s guilty plea to a minor charge of “Alien in Possession of a Firearm,” both of these cartel associates became FBI informants and were considered essentially unindictable well before Operation Fast and Furious concluded. One ATF official would later say that the discovery that the primary targets of their investigation were not indictable was a “major disappointment.” Adding to the information-sharing failure, DEA had actually provided Celis-Acosta’s cartel connection to ATF in December 2009 in an effort to ensure that ATF’s efforts in Operation Fast and Furious were not duplicative.”

On the Justice Department’s Failure to Cooperate (p.9):

“When the Committee issued a subpoena to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on October 12, 2011, for Justice Department documents, the Committee specified 22 categories of documents it required the Department to produce. Department representatives specifically confirmed their understanding of each category. To date, the Department has not produced any responsive documents for 12 of the 22 categories. The Department has not completely fulfilled any of the 10 categories for which documents have been produced. For over a year, the Department has issued false denials, given answers intended to misdirect investigators, sought to intimidate witnesses, unlawfully withheld subpoenaed documents, and waited to be confronted with indisputable evidence before acknowledging uncomfortable facts.”

On the struggle of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s family to get the truth (p. 11):

“While the Justice Department’s admissions have largely come as a result of being confronted with indisputable facts, the painfully slow process of getting the truth has been a continuing frustration for the Terry family. They still do not have the all the facts about the circumstances surrounding Brian Terry’s murder …. As Brian’s sister said of his family’s desire to know the full truth, ‘Brian was about making a difference and justice. And I just feel that this country owes it to him, because he spent his whole life fighting for this country some way or another.’”

On Retaliation Faced by Agents who blew the whistle (p.13):

“Agent Alt notified his superiors about his impending testimony. The next day, ATF Internal Affairs notified Alt that they wanted to talk with him about another matter. On May 5, 2011, Agent Alt met with ATF internal affairs investigators about allegations that Alt downloaded two prohibited applications to his government-issued phone. The total cost of these applications was eight dollars …. Alt was prevented from transferring offices and his eligibility for promotions and pay raises barred during the pendency of the investigation – all supposedly over eight dollars in phone applications.”

On Fast and Furious fueling violence in Mexico (p. 15):

“In October 2010, cartel members kidnapped Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez, the brother of the Attorney General for the Mexican state of Chihuahua, where Juarez is located. The cartel posted a video of the kidnapped Rodriguez online, in which he alleged, under duress, that his sister had ordered killings at the behest of the Juarez cartel. The video went viral and became a major news story in Mexico. Two weeks later, Mexican authorities found Rodriguez’s body in a shallow grave. In a subsequent shootout with cartel members responsible for the murder, police arrested eight and recovered sixteen weapons. Two of these weapons traced back to Operation Fast and Furious. Although the Department of Justice learned that these weapons traced back to Fast and Furious almost immediately, no one informed the Mexican government. Not until congressional investigators were on the verge of learning the truth about the connection did an ATF agent in Mexico finally tell the Mexican Attorney General in June 2011 – seven months after Rodriguez’s murder.”

On allegations of intentional wrongdoing by Justice officials (p. 17):

“Perhaps the most damning assessments of the Department’s handling of the fallout from Operation Fast and Furious have come from two Justice Department officials. Kenneth Melson, the former Acting AFT Director during the pendency of Fast and Furious, told Congress that, “it appears thoroughly to us that the department is really trying to figure out a way to push the information away from their political appointees at the department.” Patrick Cunningham, who had been tasked by the Justice Department with investigating ATF whistleblower allegations of gunwalking, would later invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions about his work.”

Will the contempt citation push the DoJ into greater transparency? I wouldn’t bet that way, but the White House won’t want this in court, either, where a judge could order the release of a lot more than the administration would like. Brinksmanship just got a little more brink-ish.

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Obama’s Cinco de Mayo message: “‘No’ is not an option” on the DREAM Act

To be clear, “no” is an option on unemployment dropping below eight percent or America avoiding an entirely foreseeable entitlement-driven fiscal meltdown. But the DREAM Act, to which Congress has already said “no” several times? Nuh uh. That’s happening this time. At least rhetorically. A solid Hispandering strategy six months out from Election Day deserves nothing less
.

“We’re going to keep fighting for this common-sense reform — not just because hundreds of thousands of talented young students depend on it, but because ultimately America depends on it,” the president said at the annual Cinco de Mayo reception at the White House. “‘No’ is not an option. I want to sign the DREAM Act into law. I’ve got the pens all ready. I’m willing to work with anybody who is serious to get this done, and to achieve bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform that solves this challenge once and for all.”…

In his brief remarks, Obama welcomed everyone to celebrate the “tres de Mayo” at this year’s party. The president will spend the real Cinco de Mayo this Saturday campaigning in Ohio and Virginia. “We just like to get the fiesta started early around here,” he joked.

It’s smart of him to focus on the DREAM Act specifically instead of immigration reform generally since it turns up the heat on Rubio’s forthcoming DREAM bill. That’s really win/win for O: If Rubio can figure out a way to get it through the Senate and the House, Obama gets a big signing ceremony he can use to try to make himself the public face of the legislation. If the GOP deadlocks over the bill and it fails, Obama gets to do a round of media hits about how the Democrats are Latinos’ only reliable friends on immigration and how Mitt Romney will certainly bow to conservative pressure if elected and end up opposing future versions of the bill. For that reason, it’s almost unimaginable that Romney will oppose Rubio’s measure, no matter how far it goes as a limited amnesty. Whether or not it’s actually true that immigration will be a key issue for Latino voters — according to Quinnipiac, they’re split nearly evenly on Arizona’s immigration law — it’s enough of a risk that Romney won’t feel safe being on the other side of the issue. Imagine if he and Rubio make the case for the bill nationally and it ends up going down in flames in the Republican House anyway. Romney will have been embarrassed by his own caucus and Democrats will trot out their “Republicans hate Latinos” talking-point demagoguery notwithstanding his support for the bill, which I guess actually makes this a win/win/win for Obama. Remind me again — why is Rubio rolling this thing out now?

Here’s a brutal bit of satire that I’ve been meaning to post for the last few days. It’s a cutting take on identity-politics gimmicks, and of course the Republicans get it far worse than the Democrats. With the Onion, you’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet. Exit question: Is Mitt planning on doing any Spanish-language media hits this year? We all understand he’s going to lose the Latino vote but contesting it would be helpful.

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