The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Obama Meltdown Beginning? Plus: Romney Campaign on ‘$5 Trillion’ Lie

Posted on | October 7, 2012 | 20 Comments

Ed Driscoll’s favorite Insta-phrase “preference cascade” (describing the sudden shifting of opinion) could be the best understanding of what we might — I emphasize, might — be beginning to see in the aftermath of Wednesday’s debate:

A new poll shows a slight change in the presidential race immediately following Wednesday night’s debate in Denver, with a 4-point lead for President Obama the day before the debate becoming a 1-point deficit the day after his uninspiring peformance.
On Tuesday, the Washington, D.C.-based Clarus Research Group surveyed 590 likely voters and found Obama leading Mitt Romney, 49 percent to 45 percent. On Thursday, Clarus found, in an identical number of interviews, that Romney had inched ahead by 1 point, 47 percent to 46 percent.

Caution is necessary for several reasons:

  1. Polls are a lagging indicator;
  2. Any one poll may be an anomalous outlier; and
  3. Presidential elections are fought on a state-by-state basis, and the ultimate key is not what any national poll shows, but rather how the battle shapes up in the dozen or so “swing states” where both campaigns are concentrating their efforts.

Having been skeptical about polls that showed implausibly bad results for Romney — who will certainly not lose Ohio by 10 points, no matter what numbers any damned pollster reports — I am not going to abandon skepticism now, just because the poll numbers are more in line with my beliefs or preferences.

Nevertheless, for several months, I had been saying that I thought the outcome of the election would hinge on the debates, and the one-sided ass-whupping Romney put on Obama may have triggered a decisive shift that the polls are already beginning to detect.

If you check the Real Clear Politics national average, you see that Sept. 26/Oct. 1, Obama held a lead of four or more points after having been tied with Romney just a month earlier. According to Gallup’s tracking poll, Obama had led by 6 points most of the way from Sept. 19/Oct. 2. Both of these key indicators now show a trend toward Romney, who has closed the gap to 3 points in Gallup and 1.6 points in the RCP, which is mirrored in recent state-by-state results for Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Wisconsin.

However, to emphasize again, polls are a lagging indicator. What is important in studying election polls is to follow the trendline, and we don’t yet have enough results from different firms to be able to say (on Oct. 7) that Romney’s looking like a definite winner for Nov. 6.

In the short term, however, Mitt has gained ground and, if we extrapolate the current trend another four days, by the time Joe Biden walks into Thursday’s debate with Paul Ryan, Biden will know that he and Obama are behind the eight ball: Already trailing in most national polls and no better than even in the key swing states.

C’mon, be honest: Does anyone in either party think Biden can win that debate with Ryan? The human gaffe machine versus the top Republican budget wonk? Word out of the Romney camp is that, leaving nothing to chance, Ryan is being debate-prepped within an inch of his life. Now imagine the cool, smart and well-prepared Ryan facing off against a Joe Biden who knows that the polls are already showing Romney pulling ahead.

Joe’s gonna be under heavy pressure, sweating like a pig, and if he cracks under the strain, a decisive Ryan win Thursday could add another two or three points to Romney’s poll bounce. Extrapolate that trend a bit further . . .

Well, best not to get too far ahead of ourselves, piling one hypothetical contingency atop another. But it is possible to imagine a scenario where Mitt Romney comes into the Oct. 16 debate sitting on a 4-point lead in the national polls with just three weeks to go before Election Day. And if I can envision such a scenario, you know that Democrats must be imagining the same possibility with a sense of Fear and Loathing. 

Complete panic may sweep through the Democrats and, as Pete Da Tech Guy likes to quote General Sheridan, “Ride Right Through Them — They’re Demoralized as Hell!”

Don’t get cocky, but here’s just a bit more encouragement from Ohio: Not a lot of love for Obama in Cleveland lately.

Finally, check out this campaign message sent out Saturday night by the Romney campaign:

MEMORANDUM

To: Interested Parties
From: Gail Gitcho, Communications Director
Date: October 6, 2012

Re: President Obama’s $5 Trillion Falsehood

There was wide agreement on Thursday morning that Mitt Romney won the first presidential debate of the general election. Why? Because he laid out the clear choice voters face this November between a real recovery or four more years like the last four years.
Middle-class families have been devastated in the Obama economy. Twenty-three million Americans are struggling for work. Median incomes have declined by more than $4,500 since President Obama took office. Today, nearly one in six Americans is living in poverty. That’s clearly not the real recovery our nation needs. And since President Obama has an indefensible record on the issue voters care about most – the economy – he’s been forced to resort to diversions, distractions, and outright deceptions about both his own record and Governor Romney’s proposals.
The most glaring example was his accusation that Mitt Romney is proposing a “$5 trillion tax cut.” But Jim Lehrer had barely thanked the audience for watching Wednesday’s debate before the fact checkers swooped in and declared President Obama’s claim to be false. By Thursday night, even the Obama campaign itself had to admit its charge was untrue. Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter admitted the falsehood saying, “Well, okay, stipulated, it won’t be near $5 trillion.” In fact, multiple independent studies confirm that Mitt Romney’s tax reform plan will stimulate economic growth. This growth together with a broader tax base – these studies conclude – mean we can lower tax rates without increasing the deficit.
But what is even worse than President Obama’s deception about Gov. Romney’s proposal is the truth about his own. To be clear: the President has already raised taxes 21 times during his first term in office. And his only plan for a second term is to raise even more taxes – $2 trillion worth, in fact. Middle-class families and small-business owners will suffer most as a result, since his tax plan will subject nearly one million business owners to higher taxes, threaten more than 700,000 jobs, and cost the United States $200 billion in economic output. A study conducted by the independent and nonpartisan American Enterprise Institute (AEI) calculated that the annual cost of the debt President Obama has already racked up and the new spending he has proposed would amount to $4,000 per year in higher taxes on the middle class. And nearly five million middle-class Americans will be subject to a tax hike once Obamacare’s individual mandate is fully implemented.
Clearly, the Obama campaign was in full damage control mode at the end of this past week. Given such a devastating record, it’s no surprise Barack Obama will say and do anything to avoid talking about his middle-class tax-hike plan. And with 31 days to go until Election Day, we fully anticipate Mitt Romney will be hit by many more baseless attacks in the weeks to come as President Obama continues to avoid talking about his failed policies.
All we can do is fight back with the truth, plain and simple: Our country can’t afford another four years like the last four years. Mitt Romney has a plan to create 12 million jobs and turn our economy around, and he is the candidate who will deliver meaningful reforms to achieve the real recovery Americans need and deserve.

– –


Category: Uncategorized

Why Do Democrats Like Elizabeth Warren Hate Science?

Posted on | October 6, 2012 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

William Jacobson relates Elizabeth Warren’s socially constructed approach to genealogy. Shorter Warren: “I felt Cherokee, and feeling is being.”

Look: they have DNA testing now. Put up or shut up. Find some Cherokee who are willing to provide cheek swabs, and get some lab tests going. Find out what, if any, genetic similarities exist between the Warren genome and that of some no-kidding Native Americans.

If one is not a lying sack of crap, who has manipulated various government-sponsored Affirmative Action raaaaacism schemes for personal benefit, this should be tantamount to an interlude with the TSA.

Aren’t modern liberals supposed to be proponents of science, or something? Hm. Maybe I stumbled upon the answer in a prior paragraph.

Category: Legal Insurrection

Elmer Williams Critiques Snoop Dogg’s Voting Rationale

Posted on | October 6, 2012 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Following up on the Snoop Dogg post, here is the Elmer Williams review of Snoop’s motivations:

On the down-low may not be a familiar idiom to all readers.

Category: Barack Obama

Propaganda Known Is Propaganda Failed

Posted on | October 6, 2012 | 17 Comments

by Smitty

Really, now:
The casual browser, given only this image, is left to conclude that #OccupyResoluteDesk is a strong, statesmanlike fellow, who has become to the Democrats the giant that Reagan is to the Republicans.

Mitt Romney, in contrast, is some tiny cartoon character whose identity is bound up in a church for which your feelings may vary from nothing to negative, unless you happen to be Mormon.

Barack is a three-dimensional, molon labe kinda guy, whereas Romney couldn’t be more two-dimensional and cartoonish without crossing the Biden horizon.

Given the results of Wednesdays debates, these covers seem to have taken the two character profiles and flipped them 180 degrees. When you’re on the Left, and you’ve got nothing, which is your normal state, this is what you do.

Except that it’s not working. #OccupyResoluteDesk phoned in his debate appearance, just like the rest of his wretched administration. This propaganda has no traction, because the audience

  • Recognizes the inversion of the situation that these covers represent.
  • Has lost all hesitation about pointing at these tawdry gambits and laughing.

While I don’t wish harm on any individuals, Newsweek and Time can just die in a fire, for all I care.

via Tony Katz

Category: Media Bias

“He’ll Nail Those Debates”

Posted on | October 6, 2012 | 25 Comments

by Smitty

Althouse channeling Melinda Henneberger trying to figure out how BHO would stage a 2016 comeback.

Hahahahahahaha.

The only sense in which BHO would nail a debate in some future election cycle would be if he was giving someone a manicure in the little beauty shop he works in while the debates are on screen.

 

Category: Barack Obama

@hardball_chris ‘Pecksniff’ Matthews Goes After Welch’s Calling BS On BLS

Posted on | October 6, 2012 | 10 Comments

by Smitty

“It’s not funny, Jack.”

Why, yes it is, Mr. Matthews. You act the peevish little schoolmarm here, attempting to beat up Jack Welch for daring to state something that is known in the Court of Public Opinion: the BLS is AFU. The last 64 revisions to initial jobless claims have been >= 0. The last 64. In a row. Unexpectedly. As if by magic.

Do you understand, Mr. Matthews? Every deceit costs a little bit of credibility. After you’ve lied enough, the set of people who believe you is reduced to you, yourself. And maybe that Maddow lady.

The timing of this jobs play is so transparent as to make one wonder why you Commies didn’t throw out a bigger lie:

May fortune favor Jack Welch. As with Eastwood at the RNC, Welch has stepped in and offered a valuable public service in decrying this Administration’s deceits. Welch has the track record to back up his tweet, and certainly doesn’t need the money. He’s doing the right thing for the right reasons here, as far as I can tell.

And as for you, Matthews: conservatives await the death of MSNBC and word that you, Mike Wallace, and Keith Olbermann have formed an outlet that thinks it’s a news organization.

via The Blaze

Category: Election 2012, MSNBC, Uncategorized

Epistemic Closure Redux: The Campaign, the Debate and the Jobs Report

Posted on | October 6, 2012 | 19 Comments

The Left’s reaction to Wednesday’s debate and Friday’s job report illustrates why the political conversation in America has become so hopelessly discordant. We are not arguing about two candidates or two parties, but two worldviews. Bad news for President Obama challenges the belief system of the Left; it is not enough for them merely to dispute facts, they must destroy the bearers of bad news — accuse them of deceit and ridicule them as fools.

Go back to Julian Sanchez’s much-discussed 2010 musings about “epistemic closure” in conservative thought. Sanchez’s idea was embraced by the Left at a time when the true size of the backlash against Obama’s agenda had not yet been determined. Republicans had won the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia, and Scott Brown had been elected to Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, but the mid-term elections were still months in the future.

It was therefore still possible, in early 2010, for Sanchez and others on the Left to believe that conservative hopes of a resurgence were wishful thinking, and that the chatter coming from the Right’s alternative media (“a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News”) could be safely ignored.

One might have thought that the 2010 mid-term elections in which the GOP gained a net 62 House seats — “The Republican Mandate” — would have convinced the Left that they had miscalculated. Instead, they placed their confidence in Obama’s ability to navigate the new environment, to neutralize the Republican House majority, and then to win re-election, just as Clinton had done in 1995-96.

Everything seemed to be proceeding in accordance with those beliefs until Romney dismantled Obama in Wednesday’s debate — a psychological shock that has unhinged the Left, causing them to begin lashing out furiously and rather erratically at anyone who suggests that the dam has broken and that the “preference cascade” may doom Obama to defeat in November.

Instead of a re-play of 1996  (with Romney playing the Bob Dole role), the Left is suddenly confronted with the possibility of an election much more like 1980, and with the burden of humiliating failure that a one-term presidency signifies. So they began claiming that Romney had “won” the debate by lying and cheating, and they continued the theme — “Don’t trust those Republicans!” — in their attacks Friday on those who were dubious about the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report.

Jack Welch and Rick Santelli are not crackpots. The possibility that the BLS report was deliberately manipulated for political purposes — as an “October Surprise” — is one matter, but the continued weakness of the economy is simply a fact. And it is this fact, the failure of Obama’s economic policies, that also accounts for Romney’s easy win in Wednesday’s debate.

The failure of neo-Keynesianism cannot be accepted by the Left. It challenges their worldview and so, in what looks very much like “epistemic closure,” they attack the bearers of disconcerting facts, preferring their ideological theory to the truth.

UPDATE: Linked by William Hoge — thanks! — and welcome Instapundit/Ed Driscoll readers!

Category: Economics, Election 2012

A Different Spin On Obama’s Denver Clock-Cleaning

Posted on | October 6, 2012 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

Daily Pundit links VDH in yet another rational review of What Went Wrong In Denver. Sure, as far as it goes. But if I may “. . .think of a man, and. . .take away reason and accountability“, maybe we need to recall that the Obama Administration is nothing if not the ultimate Vagina Monologue.

Viewed through that tunnel, if you will, what you saw was the Longsuffering Black Man endure Yet Another Beating from the Usual Male Suspect of European Extraction. If you’re a dunce who is the most oversold thing since Java, you have to assume the lamb-like, sacrificial role, as you fearlessly stand for Progress and Prefixed Justice (racial-, reproductive-, class-, economic-, voting-, sexual- –it doesn’t matter).  You have to turn Mitt into a preppy Pontius Pilate, out to crucify the Chicago Savior for being unable to overcome the sins of BeelzeBush the anti-Clinton. In other words, avoid any head-on, factual confrontation, where your naked nethers would be too glaringly obvious, and go for the passive-aggressive play.

That sounds like 47 kinds of stupid, and borders on 57 flavors of insane. But this Administration has taught nothing if not the lesson that, at least tactically, you can go a long way on a line of pure hooey. Note that Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton aren’t all over the news, despite Fast & Furious and Benghazi.

Look for a nonsensical blend of “You Don’t Know The Burdens I Carry”, and “Since You Can’t Know My Burdens, Any Criticism Is Unreasonable” at the foreign policy town hall. Romney is going to have to do a lot of homework to retain that “snappy but not snippy” rhythm he nailed in Denver while talking about #OccupyResoluteDesk’s abysmal record overseas. Unlike John McCain in ’08, though, Romney is as serious as lung cancer about winning.

American Glob explores the ‘Romney cheated’ meme.

Update: linked at The Camp of the Saints and Dustbury

Category: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin