Once Again, Paul Ryan Speaks My Mind

(Photo: The Christian Post/Napp Nazworth)

 



This is one of the problems with blogging as a hobby, as opposed to a full-time gig. I don't publish my thoughts as soon as I have them.

 

Once again, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) demonstrates why his visage belongs on the banner atop this blog (and our parent web site). From the Christian Post:

With references to some of the recent government scandals, such as the Internal Revenue Service's harassment of pro-life groups, Ryan said at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority 2013" conference, "big government is bad enough in theory, look what we see in practice."

Ryan's words were an abbreviated version of the sentiment he expressed last month on Fox News Sunday, when he said of President Obama's agenda., "Now, we're seeing big government in practice. Now, we're seeing the arrogance. We're seeing the cronyism in practice in this second term, and that is even uglier than big government in theory."

He added that he and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney "had a challenge in the campaign against empty rhetoric," but "now the country is seeing what this kind of big unlimited government does in practice," which "is not a pretty picture."

 

Before I had heard/seen Ryan's remarks, I told someone that one reason the left-wing media was so desperate to downplay/bury the IRS scandal was that it manifestly exposed a critical flaw in their ideology's policy agenda. The malfeasance at the IRS (and the incompetence in other parts of the government that allowed this malfeasance to continue, unabated, for two straight years) was not an anomaly. Rather, it was an example of something that is inevitable when government grows as big as the federal government has gotten. There's no such thing as big government without a trace of incompetence or corruption.

 

It's good when someone with Paul Ryan's stature says what needs to be said, and it's even better when people listen. Whenever I feel I have an important contribution to make on topic of public interest, I try to find the time to churn out a blog post or YouTube upload. If someone has a similar thought, then I would hope he/she expresses it, especially if that person happens to be articulate and easy on the eyes and has a large audience.

Politifact F---s Up, Again

This pretty much says it all:

Pretty much. I would only add that PolitiFact has a history of faux journalism, characterized by sloppy work, specious analysis and selective fact-checking. Only once since the site first named its "lie of the year" has the label been bestowed on an actual lie (last year, when they appropriately dubbed the Democrats' talking point that congressional Republicans voted to "end Medicare" the lie of the year).

In 2009, "death panels" received the non-honor, but of course, that was not a statement, and therefore cannot technically be a lie. The following year, PolitiFact claimed that calling Obamacare a "government takeover of health care" was not only a lie but deserved the 2010 "Lie of the Year" aphorism. Their explanation relied heavily on a very narrow logical framework:  

 

"'Government takeover' conjures a European approach where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees," Politifact creator/editor Bill Adair and deputy editor Angie Drobnic Holan wrote. "But the law Congress passed, parts of which have already gone into effect, relies largely on the free market."

So, according to PolitiFact, because Obama and the Democrats weren't technically nationalizing the American health-care industry, calling Obamacare "a government takeover" was 100% false. (Throughout the year, the web site gave different versions of the claim a "Pants on Fire" rating, which means that the assertion is not only false but "ridiculous".)

Now, once again, PolitiFact has failed to help "find the truth in politics," its stated mission. Perhaps most disgraceful is that the statement it dubbed the 2012 "Lie of the Year" wasn't made, at least not the way PolitiFact analyzed it.

As Gutfeld mentioned, this year's dubious distinction went to Mitt Romney's statement that Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" at the cost of American jobs. Back in October, Politifact posted about the claim and ruled it a "Pants on Fire!" falsehood. The problem? The ad in which the claim was uttered didn't say that the Italian manufacturers who bought Chrysler were going to build Jeeps in China "at the cost of American jobs;" it didn't even imply as much. PolitiFact added that last part. Without it, the statement is not only accurate but true. As Bloomberg News reported, "Fiat SpA (F), majority owner of Chrysler Group LLC, plans to return Jeep output to China and may eventually make all of its models in that country, according to the head of both automakers’ operations in the region." (emphasis added)

So it sounds like, even if the Romney campaign had claimed that American jobs would be lost as a result of the production of Jeeps in China, it would have had some justification for doing so. Not according to PolitiFact, who called the ad "brazenly false."

Maybe they just don't know the meaning of the word "false". Or "brazenly". Or "fact". Somebody should get Angie Drobnic Holan a dictionary for Christmas

One Reason NOT To Check My E-mail Every Five Minutes

I've gotten burned before for being less than diligent about checking my inbox, but something happened on election night that made me glad I wasn't furiously refreshing my e-mail as often as I was the live election results from the Ohio and Colorado Secretaries' of State web sites. At 8:04 p.m. (according to the time stamp on the message), an email with the following subject appeared in my Yahoo! Mail inbox: 

WSJ NEWS ALERT: Romney Wins Michigan

The error wasn't limited to the subject line, either; the message read, in part: "Mitt Romney wins Michigan, the Associated Press reports." Of course, Mitt Romney did not win Michigan, and the AP did not project that he had. This message was followed by another at 8:10 with the subject, "WSJ NEWS ALERT: CORRECTION: Obama Wins Michigan".

I won't fault the Wall Street Journal for this mistake, but I hope there weren't too many Romney supporters who were made to feel false (if temporary) joy and crushing disappointment because of it.

Can Romney Afford to Skip Florida, Virginia?

Yesterday, I began typing a post examining whether it would be prudent for Mitt Romney to forgo any further campaign stops in Florida and Virginia--seeing as he's increasingly likely to win those states--in favor of less solid battleground territory, given that Republicans have a good chance at picking up Senate seats currently held by Democrats in both those states. Then I learned that Hurricane Sandy was making an impact on the campaign; Mitt Romney has already canceled two campaign stops in Virginia, and there's talk of him doing the same in Florida. The central dilemma remains, though: With eleven days left and polls showing a slight but consistent lead for the Republican ticket in these two swing states, would the nominees' time be better psent in states where they're either tied with or slightly behind the incumbents (i.e., New Hampshire, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and Nevada)? Or, is control of the U.S. Senate so critical that it's worth stopping in Florida and Virginia again, if only to boost the GOP candidates for Senate there?

Personally, I'd say yes to the former and no to the latter. The reason is threefold. First, a prospective "coattails" effect is usually a shaky basis for a campaign strategy. Second, time is of the essence, and at this point in the campaign, neither side can afford to waste a single hour. Third, there are also heated U.S. Senate races in Nevada, Wisconsin and Ohio, and Republican victories in the first two are critical if the GOP is to retake the chamber. (Picking off Sherrod Brown in Ohio would be nice, and is certainly possible, but unlikely to be decisive.) Strategic ad buys and a campaign rall or two in Michigan and Pennsylvania, which the Obama campaign has taken for granted, might also prove essential to Romney pulling off an upset in either state, which would almost certainly make the outcome in Ohio academic. 

Whatever they decide, it might not make a difference. While the number of appearances each candidate makes in a state doubtless has some marginal impact on voters, it's ground game that's likely to make the difference at this late stage, and what effect (if any) Sandy will have on voter turnout has yet to be seen.

Debunking Juan Williams’s Debunking of the “GOP’s false narratives about the Benghazi attack”

Ahead of Monday night's debate, Juan Williams, one of the few calm voices of reason on the American left, endeavored to, in his words, "make three corrections to the record about the campaign’s most controversial foreign policy topic: the murder of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya." (There were also three other Americans who were murdered; let's not forget them.) He put out this column, in which he articulated three "false narratives" about the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi and purported to correct each one. After reading his corrections, however, I felt the need to make some corrections of my own. 

Juan first attempts to correct  "the charge that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice lied to the American people in the days after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi." I'm not going to delve into the what constitutes a "lie", but as I have explained, Ambassador Rice did make statements that were later proven to be false. In trying to exculpate her, Williams goes beyond the approved Democratic talking point--that Rice's statements, while factually inacurrate, were based on what the intelligence community told her--and tries to claim that the ambassador was actually telling the truth! 

The "simple fact," according to Williams, is that the "Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper has confirmed that Rice told the truth in describing the assessment of the intelligence community at the time of her remarks." That is a fact, but it is not so simple. Clapper's office did put out a statement on September 28 that said, in part: 

In the immediate aftermath [of the attack], there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo. We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available. Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving.

The problem is that Rice and other administration officials went beyond simply "describing the assessment of the intelligence community at the time"; on September 14th, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told the press corps, "We have no information to suggest that [this] was a pre-planned ... attack." Secretary Clinton herself said this was in response to a video. Rice and others weren’t just relaying the assessment of the intelligence community; they were telling the country that the administration had no information that the attack was pre-planned or premeditated, and that was false. 

The second "false" narrative Williams attempts to correct is actually twofold, as he presents it: 

It is being charged that requests for extra security in Benghazi were denied by the administration.

The suggestion is that the attack would have been stopped, and the ambassador still alive, if the requests had been granted.

Notice that the first sentence is a factual statement, while the second is merely an inference. I actually haven't heard any Republican charge "that requests for extra security in Benghazi were denied"; there were requests for added security in Tripoli, as Williams points out in his article, not Benghazi. Maybe he's heard something I haven't. Regardless, I'll not take issue with the contrary inference(s) he draws from the indisputable fact that the administration denied requests for security reinforcements in Libya, but then Williams offers up his own opinions about this charge:

There is an air of hypocrisy about this second charge from Republican critics.

House Republicans voted to cut nearly $300 million in funding from Embassy Security as part of their most recent budget.

That is true; however, that budget never became law, so these cuts were never made, and Charlene Lamb, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and head of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, testified under oath earler this month that budget considerations played no role the decision not to increase security.

Williams's "third and final correction comes in response to the charge that the attack on Benghazi is evidence that al Qaeda is resurgent." Williams says this "attack" comes from the Romney campaign, who he accuses of arguing that, "notwithstanding the Obama administration’s claims, the threat from al Qaeda has not significantly diminished despite the death of Osama bin Laden."

I've not seen/heard anyone on the Romney campaign make this claim; what I have seen and heard is Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, tell CBS News that "al Qaida has come back." Williams curiously doesn't mention this; instead, he argues that "missions authorized by the Obama administration have killed the top commanders of the terrorist group, including bin Laden," and that "President Obama’s drone strikes targeting al Qaeda members have decimated the remaining members of the group."

In support of this proposition, Williams quotes National Secretary Council spokesman Tommy Vietor as saying that “Our assessment that we have decimated al Qaeda leadership is unchanged. Dozens of their senior leadership have been taken off the battlefield as a result of the president's anti-terror policies.”

If the statements by Allen and Vietor can be reconciled, then it's probably because "decimat[ing] al Qaeda leadership" hasn't translated into quelling the threat this vast terrorist network poses to us and the rest of the civilized world. The claim (which again, I haven't seen anyone on the Romney campaign make) that the attack on our consulate in Benghazi evinces a resurgence on the part of al Qaeda might be better "debunked" by pointing out that we're not sure al Qaeda had anything to do with the attack, but Williams doesn't even try to argue this point. Instead, he offers a flimsy argument that doesn't even rebut the straw man he created. 

Williams concludes his piece by accusing the GOP of a "political strategy that is based on deliberate misinformation about the Benghazi assault," a very serious charge. As you can see, however, none of the three specific memes Juan attributes to the GOP contains "deliberate misinformation". 

This is serious business. A U.S. consulate was beset by terrorists who took the lives of four Americans. The Obama administration has not been straight with us about what they knew and when they knew it. If the best defense our president's supporters can put forward consists of hair-splitting and straw-man arguments, then maybe. well...our president's actions were pretty untenable.

PPP Uses D+8 Sample to Show Obama Up 1 in Ohio

I had to smile on Saturday when I saw that a Public Policy Polling survey showed Mitt Romney within one point of President Obama in Ohio. It’s not just that a Democratic polling firm says it’s a one-point race in what seems to have become Obama’s one-state firewall, although that is significant; the sample breakdown indicates that their sample consisted of 42% Democrats and only 34% Republicans. This eight-point Democratic advantage is consistent with 2008 exit poll results from the Buckeye State, but given that both parties have lost ground among registered voters, who increasingly identify as "independent", it’s difficult to understand why PPP (or any pollster, for that matter) would survey a greater percentage of political partisans and a smaller percentage of self-described independents when compared to the 2008 electorate.

In other polling news, four national polls out this morning all show Romney leading Obama. He's up by three points in the latest Monmouth University poll, 48% to 45% for Obama. The Rasmussen Tracking Poll and Politico/GWU/Battleground Poll both have him ahead by two, 49%-47%. Gallup's tracking poll continues to give Romney his largest lead, 51 to 45 percent. It would be easy to dismiss that as an outlier, but in addition to being the most experienced and reputable outfit in this field, Gallup also has a pretty good track record in recent elections. On October 20, 2008, they showed Obama leading McCain by seven points among likely voters; he won the election by seven points nationally. On October 24, 2004, they had George W. Bush leading John Kerry, 51% to 46%. President Bush won re-election with 51% of the popular vote; Kerry received 48%. So, despite the naysayers trying to discredit this enduring monument of polling, recent history indicates that their presidential election polls conducted around this time in elections past closely line up with the eventual outcome. 

What should really trouble the Obama campaign and their supporters is the trend in some of these polls (or, in the case of Rasmussen, which hasn't shown the president leading Romney in two weeks, the lack of one). The Governor's two-point lead in the Politico poll represents a three-point swing from last week, when they had the president up by one point, 49% to 48%. Monmouth's poll shows that Romney is up a point and Obama has dropped a point from their last survey, which showed the Republican leading, 47% to 46%. The candidates are tied nationally in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll at 47 percent, but that's a decline in Obama's poll position from their previous national survey, which had the president ahead with 49% of the vote to 46% for Mitt Romney. Not only does this show the lack of any measurable "bounce" from the second debate for Obama, but it crystallizes his dismal (for an incumbent) poll position, well below 50% with fifteen days to go before Election Day and early voting already underway.

Column: Obama and Biden were winning—until they faced actual opponents | Washington Free Beacon

Matthew Continetti, the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon and one of my favorite journalists, has penned another excellent column that I urge you all to read (especially if you're going to vote for Obama).

Truly, reality is the poison that will kill Obama and Biden's chances of victory next month (if only we can administer it to enough voters in time).

Oh, OH...

If you haven't seen last night's debate between Vice President Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), then, well, I don't really care. Frankly, if you're like me and already know who you're voting for but tuned in hoping to witness an epic clash between a skilled, experienced debater with a propensity toward making gaffes and a policy wonk engaging in his first one-on-one, nationally televised debate, then you probably were disappointed. I don't care to talk about it; instead, I want to focus on the presidential race in that most critical of battlegrounds: Ohio.

Back in June, I made a short video about the 2012 presidential campaign in Ohio and highlighted what I though were each candidates' strengths and weaknesses as they tried to sway voters in the state. Long story short: it was a toss-up then, and it's a toss-up now.

There was a time, though, when it looked like Obama might be running away with Ohio, leaving the Romney campaign trying to fathom a realistic path to victory without what has long been the sine quo non of a Republican electoral majority. From Labor Day through the first presidential debate last Wednesday, every public poll of the presidential race in the Buckeye State showed Obama leading. All the pollsters who had been regularly polling the state had Romney losing ground to the president, who had begun to crack 50% in some surveys.

According to polls released in the last week, however, the race in Ohio is back to a dead heat. Five different pollsters--WeAskAmerica, ARG, SurveyUSA, Gravis Marketing and Rasmussen Reports--published survey results showing the presidential candidates within a single point of each other in the state, a statistical dead heat. Given this consistency among reputable independent polling organizations, a Marist poll of Ohio voters conducted for NBC and the Wall Street Journal that has President Obama leading Governor Romney by six points, 51%-45%, deserves some skepticism. But this even without these five large grains of salt, the Marist poll should be difficult to digest. Look at the crosstabs, and you'll find that the sample of likely voters was 40% Democrats and only 29% Republicans. To put that in perspective, exit polls indicated that, in 2008 (the historical zenith of Democratic turnout in modern times), 39% of voters in Ohio identified as Democrats, 31% as Republicans, and the rest were independents. So the question this poll begs is: Do you really expect the Democrats' turnout edge over Republicans this year to be 22% greater in Ohio than it was in 2008, especially considering there are now 67,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats in the state?

Even with the Marist poll (and a CNN/Opinion Research poll showing Obama up four points in the state), the president's advantage in the RealClearPolitics average of the seven most recent Ohio polls is only 1.3 percentage points. That's down from 5.5 percentage points just eight days ago.

If accurate, then these numbers represent a statistical anamoly: Obama is running ahead of his national poll position in Ohio. As of today, the president trails Mitt Romney in the RCP average of national polls by one percentage point. Yet, in 2008, he won the Buckeye State by a 4.6-point margin, well less than his 7.3-point margin of victory over John McCain in the nationwide popular vote. In fact, in the past nine presidential elections, the Republican candidate has received a greater share of the vote in Ohio than he has nationally. Are we to expect that, with no advantage in party identification and no recent shift toward their side in statewide elections (Republicans pretty much ran the table in 2010.), the Democrats are poised to pull off what would be a historical aberration in Ohio? 

The troublesome sign for Romney is that he has yet to break 50% in the state. Obama may have a lower trough, but he also seems to have the higher ceiling.

Still, with the race this close, candidates doubt polls at their own peril, and that's probably why both candidates are treating Ohio like it's the key to victory. Romney and Ryan appeared together at a rally in Lancaster today; it was the second time in three days the former Massachusetts governor had campaigned in the state. Obama hasn't been in Ohio since Monday but has made more visits to the state this year than Romney has.

Romney Rising

Mitt Romney greets audience members at a campaign rally in St.Petersburg, Florida on Friday. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

When Scott Pelley of CBS asked him how he would turn this campaign around, Mitt Romney confidently told him, "Well, it doesn't need a turnaround."

Whether the Republican nominee for president needed one or not, things certainly have turned around in the last few days. Romney went from trailing Obama by two points, 47% to 49%, in the Rasmussen tracking poll to leading him by the same margin. He's cut the president's lead to two points in the latest Politico/GWU/Battleground survey, and the two are tied at 47% in National Journal's Congressional Connection poll. Last month, Obama led Romney by seven points in their survey.

One of the most interesting findings to note is that, for the first time that I've noticed, in both the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls, Obama's poll position is lower than his approval rating. That can either be good news for the president (because it shows he has room to grow) or for Romney (because it shows that even voters who approve of the president's job performance aren't supporting him). 

Of course, the national popular vote won't decide the election, but state polls show the Romney-Ryan campaign surging in crucial territory.

In Florida, President Obama's lead over Mitt Romney is down to just one point in the NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist survey; last month, they had the president up five points, 49%-44%. Other pollsters have the Republican ticket opening up a lead in the Sunshine State. Romney leads Obama by two points, 49%-47%, according to a survey conducted on Thursday by Rasmussen Reports. Last month, Rasmussen had Obama ahead in the state, 48%-46%. WeAskAmerica finds an even larger shift toward the Republican ticket: their latest poll of Florida voters shows Romney leading Obama by three points, 49%-46%; that mirrors the results of their Florida poll last month, which found the president on top by the same margin. 

In Virginia, the shift is even more stark. A Marist poll conducted for NBC and the Wall Street Journal finds Romney trailing the president by two points, 46%-48%, but that's narrower than the five-point lead Obama enjoyed in their last survey of Virginia voters, conducted less than a month ago. Romney leads Obama in the commonwealth, 49%-48%, according to Rasmussen Reports; that result mirrors the state of the race in their last poll of Virginians, which had Obama up by the same margin. We Ask America shows a six-point swing toward Romney in Old Dominion; he leads the president by three in their latest poll; last month, they had Obama up three points on Romney in Virginia.

Out west, the poll numbers are more muddled. Romney leads the president by three points in Colorado, 49%-46%, according to a Gravis Marketing survey; last month, they had Obama ahead in the state, 50%-46%. A poll conducted by the University of Denver, however, gives the president a four-point lead among Colorado voters, though we don't have an earlier survey they've conducted to compare those results to. In Nevada, where the president has enjoyed a small but consistent lead all year, Gravis Marketing has him ahead by just one point, 49%-48%. The RealClearPolitics average of the latest Nevada polls pegs Obama's lead in the state at 4.6 percentage points. 

Finally, in the all-important swing state of Ohio, it's a one-point race, according to American Research Group, Rasmussen Reports and WeAskAmerica. ARG and WeAskAmerica both have Romney up one point in the Buckeye State, while Rasmussen reported that Romney was down one point there. Last month, Obama led Romney by one point in an ARG survey of Ohio voters, and other surveys gave him as much as a ten-point lead in the state.

It would be easy to credit this marked surge in the Republican ticket's poll numbers to Mitt Romney's rout of Obama in the first presidential debate, but nearly all of the aforementioned polls were conducted, in whole or in part, before Wednesday night's debate. The conclusion is inescapable: the Romney surge began before he cleaned the president's clock last Wednesday in Denver.

What could explain this sudden shift in momentum in a race that, let's be honest, appeared to be slipping away from Romney as recently as last weekend? Perhaps the Libya fiasco is finally taking its toll on the president, but then why hasn't his approval rating dropped along with his poll numbers? Maybe the fundamentals of a race that should have been Romney's to lose all along are finally catching up with Obama, but if that's the case, then what took so long? Maybe those TV ads that feature Romney just sitting down and talking into the camera are resonating with voters in a way that those earlier, business-presentationy commercials with the fancy graphics didn't. Whatever the cause, it now appears to be the Obama campaign that's in desperate need of a turnaround.

101 Reasons to Elect Mitt Romney (or, to replace President Obama with a President Romney)

Recently, National Review published a list of 689 reasons to defeat Barack Obama. It was very good, but I wanted to give voters who were still on the fence as many good reasons as I could to not just vote against President Obama in 2012 but to vote for Mitt Romney, so I set about making a list. Admittedly some of the reasons on the NR's list are also reasons to vote for Romney, but I decided not to reuse any of those reasons. So, here now is my list of reasons to elect Mitt Romney president of the United States:

1. He’s actually balanced a budget.

2. He signed a balanced budget into law every year as governor.

3. His signature health-care reform law is popular.

4. His signature health-care reform law didn’t include over 20 different tax increases.

5. His signature health-care reform law didn’t include a single tax increase.

6. He read his signature health-care reform law.

7. He never disavowed his popular health-care reform law that didn’t raise taxes, despite numerous entreaties from the Right to do so.

8. Because he doesn’t kowtow to the Right.

9. Because the people who claim he kowtows to the Right need to be smacked upside the head with reality.

10. Because his health-care reform law was a constitutional exercise of the state government’s power to regulate commerce within the state, so he didn’t have to lie and tell people it wasn’t a tax, then send his solicitor general before the Supreme Court to argue that the individual mandate is constitutional because it is a tax.

11. “Corporations are people.”

12. The Left’s reaction to “Corporations are people.”

13. Because corporations are founded by, run by, owned by and employ people.

14. We’ve never had a bad president from Massachusetts.

15. Nobody else in this race is serious about balancing our budget. (No, Gary Johnson doesn’t count.)

16. Massachusetts’s credit rating was upgraded under his tutelage.

17. During his term as governor, household income in Massachusetts increased.

18. During his term as governor, Massachusetts’s unemployment rate dropped from 5.6% to 4.7%.

19. He cared enough about the family dog to bring him on vacation instead of dumping him in a kennel somewhere (or eating him. Let’s not forget Obama ate dog.)

20. Paul Ryan

21. Vice President Paul Ryan

22. President Paul Ryan

23. Because the next Supreme Court appointment should be made by a president who actually respects the Constitution.

24. Because he never said he likes firing people.

25. Because we like being able to fire our bank, our insurance company, our long-distance carrier etc. if we’re not satisfied with the services they’re providing us.

26. Because we ought to fire our president and hire someone who understands what it means to be accountable to people.

27. We need a president who understands the difference between outsourcing and offshoring.

28. He used money people chose to invest with him, knowing the risks they were taking, to help create jobs here in the U.S.

29. Barack Obama used taxpayer money to stimulate companies that expanded their overseas operations. (Union members: that means “companies that ship our jobs overseas.”)

30. He knew that GM and Chrysler would eventually have to go through bankruptcy before they could “come roaring back.”

31. Obama didn’t.

32. Planned Parenthood has spent millions slandering a man who stood by his wife through her battles with breast cancer and multiple sclerosis.

33. That wife donated $500 to Planned Parenthood.

34. Make Planned Parenthood regret their smear campaign even more than Ann Romney regrets that donation. (Ideally, their regret should be magnified by the ratio of their total ad spending this year to Ann Romney’s donation.)

35. Enough “Recovery Summers”; it’s time for a recovery presidency.

36. Forcing Lawrence O’Donnell to cover the defeat of President Obama by Mitt Romney is the second-most fitting just dessert for his vicious attack on Ann Romney. (A kick in the head from Rafalca would be the most fitting, for those of you who were wondering.)

37. Mitt Romney donated a greater share of his income to charity in 2011 than did President Obama.

38. Paul Ryan donated a greater share of his income to charity than Joe Biden, the man who said it’s “patriotic” for people to pay higher taxes.

39. Paul & Janna Ryan actually made less money in 2011 than Joe & Jill Biden but gave more to charity.

40. Because charity comes from the heart, not from the Dept. of Health & Human Services.

41. It’s time for Kathleen Sebelius to get rejected by Brookings and wind up teaching at some third-rate university.

42. Because nearly 47% of wage earners in this country pay no federal income taxes.

43. Because most of the people voting for President Obama really do consider themselves “victims” who are entitled to “free” stuff.

44. He gave an honest answer when asked about security concerns ahead of the London Olympics.

45. When it comes to being a leader, candor is more important than tact.

46. We shouldn’t reward voyeurism.

47. To teach Barack Obama that lying doesn’t pay.

48. To teach the mainstream media that they are not puppetmasters.

49. To teach Priorities USA that we’re not that gullible.

50. He’s the most experienced executive to be nominated for president by a major party since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

51. He was a success as the head of Bain Capital.

52. He was a success at running the Olympics.

53. He was a success as governor of Massachusetts.

54. Obama has been a failure as president.

55. If Obama’s presidency has been a success, then it would mean that he was trying to weaken us as a country, in which case we need a different president.

56. Lech Walesa endorsed him.

57. Hugo Chavez endorsed Obama.

58. Ann Romney won’t chide Olympic gold medalists for eating at McDonald’s.

59. He can tell the good components of Dodd-Frank from the bad parts.

60. He will approve the Keystone Pipeline.

61. He's a self-made (multi)millionaire.

62. The Left hates that fact.

63. Joe Soptic

64. He doesn’t want the United States to be a “major customer” of foreign oil.

65. He has a serious plan to wean us off foreign oil.

66. His plan to wean us off foreign oil doesn’t involve dumping billions of tax dollars into “green energy” scams.

67. Prove to the world that we can be counted on to choose style over substance.

68. Because economic policies based on principles of economic freedom, limited government and “rugged individualism” actually do work.

69. Because he understands that, and Obama apparently doesn’t.

70. For Gibson Guitar.

71. For the 90,000 U.S. troops currently serving in Afghanistan.

72. For the millions of seniors who will lose their Medicare Advantage plans if Obamacare is fully implemented.

73. For every policyholder who has seen his/her insurance premiums increase since Obamacare became law.

74. For every worker who has lost or is going to lose his/her health-care plan because of Obamacare.

75. For the children trapped in failing public schools.

76. He actually has a record of working across party lines to get things done.

77. Because he’s willing to work with a guy who stood on the Senate floor and told untenable lies about his taxes and said he’s “not the face of Mormonism”...

78. ...but we’re supposed to believe Obama can’t work with congressional Republicans because their floor leader in the Senate acknowledged that they want Obama to be “a one-term president.”

79. He’s actually saved and created jobs.

80. Because, while government can create jobs, it’s better to let the private sector do that.

81. Jack Black

82. His detractors claim he wants to “cut” education.

83. Even though he cut spending as governor, the Commonwealth’s schools were ranked first in the country.

84. People respect him enough to spend $50,000 to dine with him at a friend’s house; no appearances by George Clooney, Beyoncé or Jay-Z necessary.

85. Let the Obamas spend their next anniversary in the romantic seclusion of private life.

86. He won’t lambast you for going to Las Vegas.

87. So that our nation can begin to heal.

88. Because, while Osama bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda is very much alive.

89. He wants to sign the repeal of Obamacare.

90. He will grant waivers to all 50 states until Obamacare is repealed.

91. He won’t be distracted during important meetings by a recurring nicotine fix.

92. He’s willing to touch the third rail of American politics.

93. He’s offered specific reforms to save our entitlement programs from bankruptcy.

94. He keeps track of the promises he makes.

95. He’s never raised taxes.

96. Because it is possible to balance the budget without raising taxes...

97. ...which he did as governor of Massachusetts.

98. Nancy Pelosi said, "Mitt Romney is not going to be president of the United States. ... I think everybody knows that."

99. Sandra Fluke

100. He did more to create jobs as one man in the private sector than Barack Obama has done with all the power and resources of the presidency.

101. We need a president we can trust.

This list may grow as time passes, but with only a month to go before Election Day and early voting already underway in most states, I decided to go ahead and post what I had. Check back often!

Romney's Stoicism Should Help Him in Debates

As the only two candidates who have any chabnce of winning the 2012 presidential election get ready to face off tonight for the first of three debates this month, the pressure is on Mitt Romney to score a victory or something that will vault him past President Obama in the polls, which show him trailing, albeit by a narrow margin.

One source of discontent among voters--regardless of their preferred candidate--when it comes to Romney has to do with his persona. More specifically, his affect. (If you don't know someone personally, then you can't really know their personality, so when voters talk about how they view the candidates personally, most of them are really just going off of what they've observed.) Mitt is "a bit of a stiff," "distant", "dull," "wooden," "remote," "insensitive" and "cold", according to any number of pundits, commentators and media gadflies. This has made it difficult for him to "connect" with voters, people say, asnd ha led to some noticeably awkward moments on the campaign trail.

Yet, while a lack of emotion may not be conducive to politicking, it is this steel temperament that may serve Mitt Romney well as he debates a president who has shown that nothing is off-limits, no blow is too low as he fights to stay in power. With President Obama a stone's throw away, inveighing against him on all manner of topics, Mitt Romney will keep a stiff upper lip, matching Obama's calumny with calm.

Throughout his time in office, President Obama has proven himself to be very vindictive, petty and thin-skinned, and as anyone at FOX News can tell you, it's not difficult to get under that skin. In the era of televised presidential debates, the slightest sign of exasperation can do irreparable damage to a candidate. (Who can forget Al Gore's repeated sighing in his first debate with Geroge W. Bush or the first President Bush looking at his watch during the second debate in 1992?) Unlike Obama, Romney is not likely to get rattled by an opponent's vituperative rhetoric. Of course, there are times were a candidate can appear too vapid. (Paging Mike Dukakis.)

Will Obama's Machine Save Him?

Let's start out by acknowledging the obvious: History is not on President Obama's side this election year. No incumbent president in the postwar era has won reelection when the unemployment rate was above 7.2%; right now, it's 8.1% and unlikely to change very much between now and Election Day. Every president since Andrew Jackson who has won re-election has been re-elected with a greater percentage of the popular vote than he received four years earlier; no serious, intelligent person in either camp believes Obama will do better this year than the 53% he pulled in 2008. He is the first U.S. president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs. A majority of voters do not like his signature legislative achievement and want it repealed. An even larger majority thinks the country is on the wrong track. This is not an atmosphere conducive to getting re-elected.

Yet, Obama appears to be flying high. In every swing state, there's at least one poll showing him ahead of Mitt Romney. His approval rating is now slightly higher than his disapproval, depending on which poll you look at. As of the writing of this post, he's ahead in all the national polls. The percentage of voters who view him favorably has inched upward, while his negatives are slightly down. With a month and a half to go before Election Day, Romney is behind, and the president looks like he's about to close the deal.

Part of the blame for this surely lies with the Romney campaign. I know it's easy to second-guess when you're not in the heat of battle, but the Romney-Ryan campaign is clearly not waging as good a fight as they could be. (I've done my part to offer better ideas, but to no avail.) There's also the mass stupidity/gullibility of broad swaths of the electorate; a recent poll by Reason Magazine revealed how disturbingly uninformed/ignorant most voters in this country are when it comes to fiscal issues and an even basic understanding of the economy. These problems, however, would only explain why Romney isn't beating Obama. To see why the president is actually ahead in this race, you have to look beyond the lay of the land and examine the depths of what may be the greatest political machine in U.S. history.

Obama and the Democrats' ground game helped generate a historic Democratic turnout in 2008. While it remains to be seen how effective their voter turnout efforts will be in this election, they certainly didn't do much for them in 2010. Even beyond that, however, the Obama campaign is being aided by a machine that exceeds in size and scope anything Republicans have or have ever enjoyed.

You're probably familiar with the historical components of the national Democratic machine. Aside from the party operatives, there are labor unions and the pillars of their fundraising apparatus: trial lawyers, Wall Street, the Entertainment Industry and, more recently, Internet tycoons (Silicon Valley and Puget Sound). Today, however, President Obama is benefitting not just from these traditional support structures but also a network of forces devoted to keeping him in power. Here now is a rundown of these forces and a brief description of how they are helping to buoy this terrible president's poll numbers:

The Media

With the exception of talk radio, every medium in this country is dominated by the Left, and few would disargee that the right-wing rhetoric that pervades talk radio is limited to the commentary side. When it comes to delivering "hard" news, conservatives have no advantage over liberals on the airwaves, the Internet or in the print media.

Overt, delibrate bias in the press--i.e., among reporters who are supposed to cover stories in an objective fashion and not inject their own personal analysis into their reporting--is hard to spot, but there have been several clear examples in this election cycle (such as when Andrea Mitchell got caught running a misleadingly edited clip of Mitt Romney speaking in Pennsylvania on MSNBC). The more dangerous biases manifest themselves in the way journalists present the news or in the choices they make about which stories to report on and how much attention to give each one. Conclusive proof of these biases, however, is difficult to produce, unless you can get an apples-to-apples comparison of two nearly identical news stories with different political implications. We got such an example last week, when two old recordings surfaced; one showed Mitt Romney speaking at a fundraiser back in May about, inter alia, the growing culture of entitlement in America, the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palistenians, and the Republican party's challenges with the Latino vote. (This footage had actually been public for months, but the cleaned-up images were only recently released.) The other footage featured Barack Obama speaking at Loyola University in 1998 about how he "believe[s] in redistribution" and how government policies can effect redistribution of resources. According to the Media Research Center, from Tuesday evening (September 18) through Thursday morning (September 20), the big three networks combined spent over an hour covering the Romney footage while devoting less than six and a half minutes to the Obama tape. Romney's comments were also the lead topic of discussion in the A-blocks of Meet the Press and This Week w/ George Stephanopolous on Sunday.

It gets worse. After initially claiming to have released the full tape of Romney speaking at the fundraiser, the saboteurs who put this video out there admitted that they hadn't actually released everything they had recorded. Then, David Corn of Mother Jones, who obtained the raw footage of Romney from James Carter IV (grandson of former Pres. Jimmy Carter), acknowledged that they didn't even have a complete recording of everything the candidate said at the fundraiser. In other words, we do not know and we may never know the full context of what Governor Romney said at that fundraiser. The only tenable argument of why this doesn't render everything Romney is on tape saying meaningless (or at least not newsworthy) is that no context could possibly mitigate what he said, but as President Obama himself has averred, the out-of-context defense is not amenable to such an exception.

The more disgusting aspect of this egregious display of bias is that the network news devoted more time in the same time period to covering this Romney story than the deadly violence in the Middle East or the administration's constantly-changing narrative about the genesis of the attacks on our embassy in Cairo and the counsulate in Benghazi. To that point, on Thursday, September 13th, the New York Times ran with the headline "ENVOY DIES IN LIBYA ATTACK ON EMBASSY; A FLASH POINT FOR OBAMA AND ROMNEY". Nothing wrong with that, but in the story below, under the headline "A Challenger’s Criticism Is Furiously Returned," Times reporters Peter Baker and Ashley Parker offered the following account of the two candidates' reactions to the tragic news out of Libya:

While President Obama dealt with the killings of an ambassador and three other Americans and deflected questions about his handling of the Arab world, Mitt Romney, the Republican seeking his job, wasted little time going on the attack, accusing the president of apologizing for American values and appeasing Islamic extremists.

No mention of the president's decision to skip his intelligence briefing and head to Las Vegas for a fundraiser in the wake of what we now know was a terrorist attack. Query whether his predecessor would have gotten the same treatment had he done the same. (I can't remember; did the Times run that photo of President Bush aboard Air Force One flying over New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit?) In fairness, the article did mention President Obama's transparently political (and, in my opinion, disgracefully petty and unbecoming of the office of president) charge that Mitt Romney has "a tendency to shoot first and aim later," though Baker and Parker characterized the comment in a much more charitable fashion. (So, to recap, Mitt Romney criticizes the U.S. Embassy in Cairo for apologizing for a movie in their official statement to an attack, while the president of the United States takes a cheap shot at his challenger, using tougher language against him than he did against the terrorists who attacked us. Same thing, I guess.)

There is also the issue of media organizations using facially nonpartisan means to influence voters. Take polling, for example. In recent years, many networks and media have started commissioning thir own polls instead of relying on those done by professional pollsters, like they've historically done. This does not evince any sort of bias per se, but consider this question from a recent Bloomberg poll:

Gov. Mitt Romney has told donors that 47 percent of Americans think of themselves as "victims" who are dependent on government programs. Which best describes your reaction? (Read list. Rotate.)

41 He’s right and more people should be able to make it on their own

51 He’s wrong and most Americans work hard and sometimes need some help from the government

8 Not sure

This is what's known as a "push poll" question, one designed to "push" a political narrative, rather than collect data in an objective fashion. You might expect this from Democratic operatives masquerading as pollsters, but it has no place in a professional survey conducted for a news organization that plans to report it as news.

Special Interest Groups

Newspapers and TV Networks aren't the only once-independent entities that have long since sacrificed their objectivity for partisan endeavors. This election cycle, Obama and Democrats have benefitted from overtly partisan activities by organizations that are supposed to be apolitical. The fraternity between the American Left and, e.g., the AARP, NOW and the NAACP is no longer clandestine, but the serious problem Republicans have as yet been unable to solve is that a lot of voters--viz., the constituencies these groups purport to represent--still see these organizations as trustworthy, independent sources of information; even worse, they've fallen into the same trap that so many union members have--believing that the charlatans running these organizations have their best interests at heart.

Obama and his campaign have recognized this phenomenon and are already capitalizing on it. One Obama campaign ad--laughably entitled "Facts"--quotes the AARP as saying that Obamacare "cracks down on Medicare waste, fraud, and abuse" and "strengthens guaranteed benefits in Medicare." (For the record, AARP blessed Obamacare with its stamp of approval; this Obama ad might have some semblance of credibility if it cited to a source that had no motive to lie about the subject.) The ad also quotes the AARP as saying that Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity "would undermine the market power of Medicare and could lead to higher costs for seniors." (There's that word "could" again!)

Some of these groups have their own political arms that cut out the middle man by simply disseminating their propaganda themselves. Planned Parenthood's PAC (Political Action Committee) has been on the airwaves in key swing states for months. This ad, which cuts a clip of Romney speaking out of context to deceive viewers into thinking the candidate aims to "get rid of" Planned Parenthood, is airing in Ohio and Virginia.

To his credit, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have tried to break through the force fields of deception these institutions have erected and maintained around their target audiences; Romney spoke at the NAACP convention last month, and Ryan addressed the AARP last week. Both got booed when they talked about repealing Obamacare, which polls continue to show is wildly unpopular with the electorate at large. These perhaps-futile efforts to appeal to the hopelessly indoctrinated exemplify the challenge faced by the Republican ticket in combatting these groups: Ignorance can be cured by knowledge, but when voters have been instilled with  misinformation that they adamantly believe is correct, confronting them with the truth just elicits a negative reaction.

The Late-Night Jesters

While Americans may be turned off by politicians and politics in general, we love our political satire, and even though most of the comics who grace our screens at night lean left politically, their humor has historically transcended partisan divides. About eight years ago, however, once the staggering popularity then-President Bush had enjoyed throughout much of his first term had subsided, the jokes made at his expense on The Late Show, Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart and the like took a nasty turn. Comedians--and their writers--forsook humor for haranguing. Clever satire gave way to odious vitriol. An increasingly obvious stream of hate had infected their once-witty material.

Still, there's a role for humorists to play in humbling our most powerful leaders, but what happens when a man you yourself have placed on a pedestal ascends to the presidency? Can you find it in you to mock, ridicule and deride the man you hold in such high regard with the same vigor you've exhibited in lampooning his predecessors? We got our answer to that over the past three and a half years, as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, David Letterman and the writers of SNL have handled President Obama with kid gloves; an objective, unbiased observer would easily conclude that they've actually been harder on his opposition. Consequently, when the president deigns to appear on their shows, he can expect a warm reception. (Actually, that's an understatement; what he can expect is the PG-13 equivalent of fellatio.)

After the president's aforementioned fundraiser in Las Vegas, he took time out from his busy schedule to honor The Late Show with his presence. (I'll not fault him for not rescheduling; it's not like the U.S. had just suffered another terrorist attack or anything.) Letterman predictably served up softball questions and even referenced Mitt Romney's comments from that edited fundraiser video, asking the president, "Is that what rich guys at country clubs are talking about?" (The president was allowed to give a three-minute, uninterrupted answer to this question.)

Similarly, when SNL kicked off its latest series of Weekend Update: Thursday Edition on September 20th, the first four jokes Seth Myers told were at Mitt Romney's expense; he even found a way to work in some baseless, racially-charged smear about Mitt Romney. So much of this is to be expected, but is it really so much to ask that Myers stick to making light of actual news items that have some basis in reality instead of repeating unsubstantiated rumors that are clearly designed only to malign a good man? Why couldn't he have made a joke about the scum who started or spread this slanderous lie instead of perpetuating it?

If any of this sounds like the complaints of a pessimistic Romney supporter, then I assure you that was not my purpose in writing this article. I'm simply trying to describe, by way of example, how this incomparable political machine Obama has working for him is aiding his efforts to win re-election. I think one more example of this late-night stumping for Obama is appropriate. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert seemed all too eager to make hay of the edited Romney video once its existence became widely known, but like most of the media, they treated the doctored footage of Romney noticeably differently than the tape of Obama speaking at Loyola. Stewart actually devoted two-thirds of his program on Tuesday, September 18, to material on Romney's surrepitiously-recorded remarks, but it wasn't all humor. A merciless diatribe knocking Romney for "talking to donors in a manner you would imagine cartoon rich people talk about cartoon poorer people" (which included the tasteless use of Romney's late parents against him) turned into a vituperative rant against the nominee. I'll spare you a recitation of Stewart's invective, but suffice it to say that his tone would be more appropriate, for say, an impassioned critique of the president's inexcusable reaction to the terrorist attack on our consulate in Libya. No mention of that, nor of Obama's "redistribution" comments, and the following night, when The Daily Show finally got around to addressing the Obama tape, the target of their derision was not the president but rather, FOX News. That's right, instead of lampooning Obama's remarks with anything close to the level of fervor he displayed in lambasting Romney, Stewart and his writers found a way to make FOX News, which they dubbed "Bullshit Mountain," the story. Imagine how they would have reacted had President Bush been the one shirking the duties and responsibilities of his office while his foreign policy was going up in flames (literally).

It's critical for the future of this country that Mitt Romney defeat Barack Obama this election cycle. That's not to say electing Romney and Ryan will fix everything; Obama and the Democrats have done a lot of damage over the last 44 months, some of which can't be quickly undone. (Heck, we haven't even undone all the damage done by FDR's New Deal.) I'll not pass judgment on whether the preceding list of individuals and groups supporting him are trying to hasten Americans decline or genuinely unaware of the consequences of their actions, not without clear and convincing evidence for or against either possibility. What there can be no doubt of is that Romney, Ryan and those of us who support their cause are up against a machine of unrivaled (in this country) proportions. In less than 40 days, we'll know whether we can rival its power.

Obama’s Ad Blitz Failing in Iowa and Out West, Working Elsewhere

President Obama has spent more money on ads per electoral vote in Iowa than any other state, but it doesn’t seem to be paying off.

The latest poll results out of the Hawkeye State show Mitt Romney leading the president, 47% to 44%. That’s within the margin of error, but if you’re an incumbent trailing your opponent by three points, then it also has to be worrisome.

Following the Republican National Convention, the Romney-Ryan campaign hit Iowa with this ad:

As you can see/hear, the ad is not very good. I think this, however, is a better ad:

Just imagine what effect more ads like this one would have on the polls. 

The Desert West Deserts Obama

In 2008, President Obama won Colorado by nine percentage points and Nevada by twelve points. Polls have shown the presidential race this year to be a dead heat in both states. Rasmussen Reports shows Romney with a two-point lead in Colorado, 47%-45%, while the president leads him by the same margin in Nevada. (The president has a one-point lead in Colorado, according to a Quinnipiac poll, and a CNN/Opinion Research survey puts his lead at three points in the Silver State, 49%-46%,.) Nevada is a particularly interesting case because, while polls have shown the president with a consistent lead in the state for months, he can't seem to break 50%. In any other state, this would portend inescapably bad news for the incumbent in what is essentially a two-way race, but Nevada is unique, in that it allows voters to cast their ballot for "None of these candidates." Thus, Obama's sub-50% approval rating need not be drag on his campaign if he can convince enough voters that Romney is an unacceptable alternative.

There's a lot of stupid people out east.

The money the president's campaign has been pouring into other swing states has yielded more appreciable dividends, however; he's opened up a small but obvious lead over Romney in Ohio and Virginia, and Michigan--which once looked like a swing state--now appears to be out of play. The Obama campaign has not been spending a lot of money in Michigan, but outside groups and labor unions have been covering for them, and the polls indicate a marked shift toward Democrats. The Detroit News poll has Obama up leading Romney by 14 points in Republican's the native state; last month, that lead was six points. EPIC-MRA also shows the president widening his lead over Mitt Romney in Michigan; late last month, their poll showed Obama ahead by just three points, 49%-46%, but their latest poll of likely voters in Michigan gives the incumbent a ten-point lead, 47%-37%. (Note that both candidates have lost support, though Romney has lost a lot more than Obama.) Republicans aren't convinced Michigan is a lost cause, however; Restore Our Future, the conservative super PAC that boosted Romney in the primaries, will be running ads in several media markets throughout the state through October 2nd. 

I'll cover Ohio and Virginia in a separate post, but I wanted to also mention that the presidential race remains a dead heat in Florida, which has expectedly been the largest recipient of campaign spending this election cycle, and of course, Obama's campaign has outspent Romney's, while pro-Romney/anti-Obama groups have slightly outspent pro-Obama/anti-Romney groups on the airwaves. With less than seven weeks to go before election Day and early voting already underway, the question becomes whether Romney, Ryan and their allies can overpower the president's machine (which I'll be posting about next week), especially with voters in some swing states feeling overwhelmed by all the attention focused on them. As November 6th draws closer, the effectiveness of campaign ads becomes more and more limited. Let's hope the Romney campaign makes the most of the next few weeks.

Obama's Post-Convention Bounce Is Gone

Earlier today, I had an experience I honestly never thought I would have. It involves a former member of Congress and violating the law, but that's not what I wanted to blog about.

If you watched any news show with a panel or round-table discussion in the past week and a half, then you've probably heard something about the Obama-Biden ticket getting a "bounce" in the polls following a hugely successful Democratic National Convention. Well, as of today, we can definitively state that that post-convention bounce is g-o-n-e.

As of today, Obama is back to his pre-convention poll positions in both the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls. (As of right now, Gallup and Rasmussen are the only two pollsters conducting tracking surveys of the pesidential race and publicizing the results.) The president leads Mitt Romney by one point, 47%-46%, in the Gallup poll and trails him by two, 45%-47%, in the Rasmussen poll. That's exactly what these two polls showed two weeks ago, right as the Dems were starting their convention in Charlotte.

Beyond these national poll numbers, the news today was mixed: Rasmussen also published the results of a survey showing Romney up two points on Obama in Colorado, 47%-45%, which is not good news for the president, who won the Centennial State by nine points in 2008. Gravis Marketing, which has been regularly polling voters in select swing states more frequently than any other independent pollster since the conventions, has Romney leading Obama by a statistically insignificant point in Florida, 48% to 47%. More significant than that, perhaps, is that their poll shows the U.S. Senate race there to be a dead heat, with Rep. Connie Mack (R., Fla.) leading Sen. Bill Nelson (D) by one point, 43%-42%. (This is one race that may hinge on which party's presidential candidate carries the state.)

The good news for Obama came from a Washington Post poll that gave him an eight-point lead in Virginia and an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that shows him leading Mitt Romney by five nationally (50%-45%). The Virginia results are especially stunning--and suspicious--as they are out of line with what every other poll of the race in that state has shown. Rare is the case when such a salient outlier is correct, but the same could be said about the Gravis Marketing survey that gave Romney a five-point lead over Obama, 49%-44%, in Virginia last week.

In my view, two states have been severely underpolled in the last week: Iowa and Wisconsin. Only once in the last six presidential elections has a Republican ticket carried either of these states, but the most recent polling data we have shows that they are both very much in play this election cycle. Now that the effects of the Democratic National Convention have worn off--at least as far as polls reflect--survey results from these and other swing states should be considered more accurate. Ordinarily I advise people with strong preferences in an election to avoid fixating on poll numbers, but from this point forward, I think it's worth it.